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New Gear: Mocet Communicator For iPad

Mocet-Communicator-White-facing-left-300pxIt has become something of a habit to announce when new gear arrives in my office, especially if that gear is destined for review. A couple of weeks ago I received a review sample of the Mocet Communicator. Communicator is essentially an audio dock for an iPad that turns it into an executive desk phone.

As you may know, I don’t generally use Apple products. However, occasionally there comes a product that is sufficiently interesting to get me to move in that direction. In the past case of the Invoxia NVX-610 I purchased an iPod Touch in order to provide a suitable host for the device under review.

The very fact that I would commit funds to purchase the iOS host should be considered a measure of how interesting I find the device under consideration. In the case of Mocet’s Communicator I bit the bullet and purchased a 64 GB 3rd generation iPad with the Retina display.

Where Invoxia was a French start-up Mocet, while not a name on the tip of every tongue, has some history in manufacturing IP telephony hardware. While it’s not a conversation I wish to enter into at length, some of the devices they manufacture would be familiar to you, at least by name. This was enough to convince me to part with funds in order to enable my admittedly lengthy review process.

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Fortunately, I’ve had enough time with the Polycom VVX-600 and its optional VVX camera module to have formed an impression of that pair. This means that the Communicator will soon occupy the left-forward position on my desk, making it my primary desk phone for at least a few weeks. As is my habit, I won’t even start to write a review until I have substantial hands-on experience with the device.

At present the iPad has Mocet’s IP Commander app loaded and registers one SIP line with the OnSIP account associated with my day job. I will eventually try with Skype and some third party SIP clients so that I can see how it handles video as well as audio.

Marc Abrams of Mocet tells me that the review samples were from an initial shipment, but production units are not far away. Offered at $199, they will initially be sold via Amazon.

This Post Has 6 Comments
  1. It would be interesting if this could position the iPad as an all-in-one desktop device (phone & thin client). According to the hookflash review they link to & the device website, it routes audio over a BT connection and supports a simultaneous BT keyboard profile. It appears, however, that there’s no video output capability (for running VMWare View on a monitor, for instance). And it isn’t exactly clear on why there are two network ports on the device… If the iPad is doing the heavy lifting and connectivity, what are those for?

    1. All this and more will be addressed eventually. I need to restrain my inclination to comment immediately as I don’t yet have much experience with the device. I especially careful as I’m not intimate with the iPad, so I need to carefully define what Mocet can do vs what Apple decrees.

  2. I have this fantasy that someone is going to make one of these handset docks that can circumvent using a Wifi connection (I wish apple would let networking route through a dock’s nic for these types of products – I don’t think they do). Maybe a Bluetooth PAN connection with the dock as the gateway would do the trick.

    Because there are two network ports out the back, and also because of the BT+EDR spec, this thing might fit my fantasy. If this truly is the case (I could be way off here), and it works well, I’d be up for getting some for an office environment. If it still relies on wifi, I think this thing would be relegated to home offices only. It will be interesting to hear how it actually works.

    Michael, If you need a test platform for video conferencing, I’d be glad to test it with you via my company’s Vidyo video conferencing system. Just get ahold of me via email or G+.

    1. Why would you want to both introduce latency and extra jitter, and additional trips through DSP?

  3. I would very much like to know how well it plays with OSTN, an Open Standards initiative of zRTP & sRTP:

    https://ostel.co

    and how well it handles Acrobits GroundWire (cross platform SIP client)

    Can it handle one leg in G.722? both?

    Does it play well with anveo.com SIP TCP? SIP TCP TLS?

    sip:sq@ostel.co (SIMPLE OTR)

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