i2004 Phones will not boot

[SamuelK]

Hi, all.

Here's a weird one. In our call center, we have about 500 i2004 phones. Recently, while setting up a bunch of (admittedly used) phones for a new project, we ran through several phones that all exhibited the same problem:

When plugging in the phone to the POE network jack, the phone's Speakerphone, Mute and Headset lights would all illuminate, but nothing else would happen, and the phone would not boot any further.

Normally, the VM indicator light illuminates when you first plug in the phone in, but that does not happen in this case. We plugged a verified working phone into the same jack with the same cable, and everything was fine.

Any idea what could cause multiple phones to fail in this exact same way?

Thanks in advance for any help!

Sam

 

[trvlr1]

Some network switches that are POE, will only allow a certain amount of phones to work, ie 20 of 24 lines, due to power limitations of the switch. These are generally 110V systems and moving to 208V systems "cures" this issue, allowing all ports to be used.
When you tested with the good phone, was that possibly working ok already and unplugging it opened up a port to use POE, so when you plugged it in to this port it worked fine? I guess the acid test is to unplug a working phone, then plug one of the "bad" ones in to see if they work.
Of course it is possible you have a batch of bad phones too, or even a bad port on the switch.