Does the SoundPoint IP 501 support HD voice?

No — the 501 predates HD voice on Polycom phones. It's G.711 and G.729 narrowband only. The IP 550 (its direct successor) added G.722 HD voice.

Is the SoundPoint IP 501 still supported on voip.army?

Yes — on our legacy provisioning VLAN running UCS firmware 4.0.15. Provisioning traffic stays isolated; call media and SIP signaling are normal.

Can I still buy SoundPoint IP 501 new?

No — Polycom EOL'd it in 2013. Our inventory is refurbished/pre-owned from large fleet decommissions, tested and re-flashed.

What's the modern equivalent?

The Poly VVX 301 — six-line greyscale workhorse with HD voice, current UCS firmware, larger 3.5-inch display. About $75 more than a refurbished 501, with materially more capability.

Polycom · SoundPoint IP · legacy fleet

Polycom SoundPoint IP 501Still works. Still supported.

The SoundPoint IP 501 is the early-2000s three-line manager phone — larger 160×80 display, three line keys, RJ9 headset jack, the original Polycom SoundPoint chassis that defined what a business IP phone looked like for a decade. EOL'd 2013; still supported on voip.army for existing fleets.

Display

graphical LCD

SIP accounts

3 lines

Ethernet

Dual 10/100

Type

Desk phone

EOL year

2013

Condition

Refurbished / pre-owned

$79 refurbished

or rent for $7.99/mo — month-to-month, return anytime

Pre-owned, tested, re-flashed for voip.army — 30-day return

Order a SoundPoint IP 501 Rent for $7.99/mo Datasheet (PDF) ↓

✓ Auto-provisioned out of the box ✓ Warranty replacement included with rental ✓ 30-day return on refurbished

Polycom SoundPoint IP 501 VoIP phone — front view with handset and dialpad — Polycom SoundPoint IP 501

Why we still support the SoundPoint IP 501.

The SoundPoint IP 501 was Polycom's manager-tier phone in the early 2000s — released 2003, EOL'd 2013. Three SIP lines, a larger 160×80 monochrome display than the 301, the dignified large-button dialpad layout that became the template for every business desk phone of the era.

It predates HD voice (the 501 is G.711/G.729 narrowband only), which is the main thing that dates it. Audio still sounds fine on calls — Polycom's narrowband handsets were the gold standard for years — but if you're putting a 501 next to a current VVX on the same desk, the difference in clarity is noticeable.

For existing fleets, the 501 onboards onto voip.army's legacy provisioning VLAN running UCS firmware 4.0.15. For new orders the modern equivalent is the VVX 250 (four-line, color, current firmware) or the VVX 301 (six-line greyscale, larger screen, current firmware).

Full technical specifications.

Display & user interface
Display	Backlit 160×80 pixel monochrome graphical LCD
Line keys	3 line keys with dual-color LEDs
Soft keys	Context-sensitive under the display
VoIP & SIP
SIP accounts	3
SIP protocols	SIP v2 (RFC 3261), supported on voip.army's legacy provisioning VLAN with UCS firmware 4.0.15
Codecs	G.711, G.729AB, G.726, iLBC
Audio
Speaker	Full-duplex with Polycom Acoustic Clarity
HD voice	Narrowband only (G.711)
Headset	RJ9 headset jack
Connectivity
Ethernet	Dual 10/100 Mbps
PoE	IEEE 802.3af Class 2
Power & physical
Power source	PoE 802.3af Class 2 (preferred) or Polycom power adapter (sold separately)
Weight	0.95 kg
Dimensions	265 × 175 × 195 mm
Wall-mountable	Yes
Lifecycle status
EOL year	2013
Firmware on voip.army	Polycom UCS 4.0.15 (legacy provisioning VLAN)
voip.army stock	Refurbished / pre-owned, tested and re-flashed

How it works on voip.army.

The SoundPoint IP 501 runs Polycom UCS firmware 4.0.15 — the last release that supports this hardware. It onboards onto voip.army the same way as any current phone, just on our legacy provisioning VLAN because the phone's TLS stack predates modern web standards. Call quality is normal SRTP.

60s

Time from plug-in to first call

Boot, fetch config from our provisioning server, register, ready. About one minute on a normal internet connection.

SIP accounts on one phone

Run up to 3 simultaneous SIP registrations. Each line key has a dual-color LED for status.

Per-device onboarding fees

Bringing your own? Send us the MAC, factory-reset, plug in. No charge to add it to the fleet.

4.0.15

UCS firmware version

Last firmware Polycom shipped for this phone (2018). Still works perfectly on voip.army; provisions over our isolated legacy VLAN because the phone can't speak TLS 1.2.

100m

Ethernet to the workstation

PC pass-through port on the back lets you daisy-chain a single ethernet drop to phone and computer.

802.3af

PoE class

Class 2. Any 802.3af-compliant switch from the last 15 years will power it without issue.

Onboarding a fleet of SoundPoint IP 501s?

Send us a CSV of MAC addresses. We add them to the provisioning server, you factory-reset and plug in, they pick up their voip.army config within a minute.

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