Chunkin Cheung

Product Category: Wireless Communications | Manufacturer: Plantronics Inc. | Price: $470 / £250 / €375

The CS60 telephone headset system is the latest product in Plantronics’ Office range. Plantronics is one of the world market leaders in commercial telephony solutions, and their broad range of products include high-quality, ergonomically-designed headsets, amplifiers and telephone systems, all designed to enhance voice communications. Plantronics introduced the world’s first lightweight telephone headset in 1962, and their products were used in Neil Armstrong’s historic “One small step for man” transmission from the moon in 1969.

Their latest CS60 is a wireless headset system, and incorporates DECT technology – Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunication – offering superior sound quality, essential for a wireless product. DECT was chosen over newer technologies, such as Bluetooth, since it has a greater range. The CS60 consists of a receiver base, with power adaptor, and a headset (Plantronics DuoPro Convertible Headset) which can be worn in one of several ways, behind the neck, over the ear or over the head, offering both flexibility and convenience. An optional accessory, sold separately, is the HL10 Handset Lifter which replicates the headset’s position in the base unit to answer and end calls, when the headset is not present.

DECT is a modern radio technology utilised for voice data, multimedia traffic and networking applications with range capabilities up to a few hundred metres. It is a digital radio standard for wireless communication in residential, corporate and public environments. It includes many forward-looking technical features that allow DECT-based wireless systems to play an important role in new developments such as internet access and other wired and wire-free services such as GSM (cellular technology) and ISDN. The DECT platform uses advanced digital radio to achieve an efficient use of the radio wave spectrum; and in doing so, delivers high-quality speech and data integrity. Another advantage with DECT technology is that it is a secure means of transmission (all data is encrypted, and in the case of the CS60, at a digital wavelength of 900MHz), with little radio interference from other sources and low power (radiation). Three main characteristics define DECT technology: TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) radio access provides high system capacity, due to its low interference rate, ADPCM (Adaptive Differential Pulse Code Modulation) speech encoding analyses the digital radio waves, ensuring DECT cordless phones output high-quality audio, and DCS/A (Dynamic Channel Selection/Allocation) guarantees that the best, most secure radio channels are used. DCS/A is a regulation of TDMA and ADPCM. This capability ensures that DECT devices and application can co-exist together in the same radio spectrum, in the same frequency, with high-quality, secure communications for the end-users.

During the setup of the CS60, we encountered few problems, the instructions provided were well-written and the installation straightforward. The receiver unit simply sits between the handset and base unit of your conventional telephone, and the power adaptor plugs into a wall outlet or power strip. However, we did find that the CS60 was not compatible with our new-style, cordless DECT-enabled phones, and a most, older conventional phones, with the problem that most DECT cordless phones use newer line socket attachments, and many older conventional telephones simply do not incorporate a feature for second handsets, or do not respond to other devices on the line. However, since most users are likely to have a modern, coded telephone, this is not a major problem.