Clear Avaya Prototype IP Phone

[.....]

I picked up my Clear Avaya Prototype IP phone today. At the end of August I was offered this Avaya J139 series prototype phone by an Avaya R&D lab technician. I had bought some BNR items from him as he had previously worked for BNR (Bell Northern Research) before the Northern Telecom bankruptcy.  Avaya acquired Nortel's IP Phone business. I had told him about my collection and that I owned a prototype Contempra speaker phone with a letter from the designer John Tyson. He asked if I would be interested in an Avaya prototype phone that they had been working with. I jumped at the offer and said yes right away! He said he would have to talk to Gord Webster the business leader who owns the product and his Senior Manager Stephane Lefebvre about it. He told me that the J139 phone was being launched at the beginning of September. His leads gave the ok and offered it to me in exchange for a $100.00 bid to their October fundraising drive, with the proceeds going to the Ottawa Snowsuit for Kids Fund. I made a $150.00 donation, $100.00 for the phone and $50.00 on my behalf. Gord Webster the product owner signed the phone and Stephane Lefebvre the Senior Manager of the team wrote a letter stating that this phone was the prototype used in the Ottawa Avaya R&D lab during the development process of the J139 series software. They had it shipped from the Avaya lab in Ottawa, Ontario to their facility In Belleville, Ontario the city I live in. All I had to do was go and pick it up.

Even though it isn't a vintage or antique phone, being a signed prototype with a letter of provenance makes it a unique collectible. It will fit right into my collection of clears. I never started out collecting clears, but they seem to be coming my way.

It is my first Avaya phone as well.

[HarrySmith]

Pretty Cool even if it is not a rotary phone!
Great providence, it will be a collectible one day.

[Pourme]

~

Nice....A collectible indeed!

[twocvbloke]

Just goes to show, it doesn't have to be vintage to be a collectable...

[Jim Stettler]

Great find. I would of bought it.
Possible find of the month?
JMO,
Jim S.

[.....]

Great find. I would of bought it.
Possible find of the month?
JMO,
Jim S.

I did think of you when I bought it Jim. 
FOTM, Compete with the King of Clears. I don't think so. LOL

[Jim Stettler]

I did think of you when I bought it Jim. 
FOTM, Compete with the King of Clears. I don't think so. LOL

A documented engineering set is a lot harder to find than a 1980 clear square button trimline desk phone.
I feel the most common clear WE  set is a 1980  square button trimline desk set.
This is because phone store employees could take them home at the end of the promo. After the break-up they got to keep any WE products they had.

I was told they had more clear trimlines on  display than any other models.
I have heard this from several different former employees that I have bought clear sets from.
JMO,
Jim S.

[Owain]

engineering set and clear and letter of provenance ...  can it get much better?

And free, if you would have made the charity donation anyway (and is that tax-deductible where you are?)

[Doug Rose]

Doug...Very cool. We have Avaya PBX where I work. We are a global business and we can call between our offices around the world on our GVN network. Our phones are similar to this. Very nice pickup and you cannot beat the tax deductible paymnent for it....other Doug

[Ktownphoneco]

Doug   ...   Your going to have to build a separate area into the downstairs family room just for prototype telephone equipment.       That's a really impressive find.    Good for you !!

Jeff

[.....]

Thanks Guys,

It took 7 weeks to lay my eyes on the real phone and the anticipation over the weeks was hard. I had never seen it in person, I had only seen the one picture he had emailed to me. (below) Then last week he sent an email saying I could pick it up at the Belleville facility on the 15th.

There won't be a tax write off for me as the money went to Avaya's fundraising team and they pass it forward by purchasing snowsuits for kids. They wanted the $100.00 for the phone and I added the extra $50.00 on my behalf as it was a very worthy cause.


Jeff, I'm not going to push my luck with my wife. It took me a while to get them into the basement from the garage. That was only because I had to clean out that room that we had been using as a storage room for the last 10 years.

I'm still able to move things around to make others fit. I did find a spot for the Avaya, right next to the clear NT Solo engineering sample.

[Jim Stettler]

Since your space is limited, I can see why you only want the  very hard to find  and ultra hard to find clear sets.
That shows restraint. 
JMO,
Jim S.

[.....]

Since your space is limited, I can see why you only want the  very hard to find  and ultra hard to find clear sets.
That shows restraint. 
JMO,
Jim S.

The space in the basement is getting tight, but I still have the garage. That wasn't in the plan wanting to get into clears, it just happened that way. The hard to find and the ultra-hard to find clears just seem to find me. I just seem to be in the right place at the right time. 

I doubt I'll ever catch up to you Jim. You are the King of Clears.

[.....]

I was bored one day and decided to see if the Clear Avaya J139 would power up. It did, but I don't have a network that I can use it on.

[Doug Rose]

I work for a Global Company that has Avaya switches at all locations linked together. GVN dialing so we can call each office "internally." Whenever a phone is not connected to the switch we get a No Ethernet connection. First Notification of an issue.

Your phone must have separate power supply to power this up? We get power from the switch.

It is very cool. We  have the ability to have many different revs of Avaya phones to install. When I get back to work I will see if the J100S are one of them ....Doug