AT&T 1040 4-Line Expandable Corded Phone System with Speakerphone, 1 Handset, Black/Silver

I have 11 of these phones in various locations in my home and a nearby barn. They work very well, and were a very simple and inexpensive way to create an office-style telephone system. Although the manual indicates that the full telephone line length should be less than 300 feet, my system has about 400 feet of wire, and operates without any difficulty.I like the 1080 because it lets me know when I have a voice mail message waiting in my phone company's "answering machine" service. The 1040 and 1070 models work very well too - they just don't have as many features. I started to build my system a few years ago. AT&T has a newer system, but I don't think you can mix the different phone types. I've never had any problems with any of this series of phones.The phone works fine even when the backup batteries go dead. If you put in the 9V backup batteries, I recommend using rechargeable ones. Where I live, we loose power fairly frequently, and the phones use a fair amount of electric power to keep going during the power outages. You might not have that problem. Even after long power outages and for phones with dead batteries, the system comes up fine when power is restored - none of the programmed settings are lost.

Updated 4/23/11Further to the comments below. In our own AT&T 1070 vs. the Panasonic KX-TS4200B bake-off, we ultimately went with the AT&T 1070. But for intercom speaker/line quality issues, both phones have this problem, which since the intercom works using radio frequencies, is typically caused by outside interference. So in addition to my earlier comments below, 2 recommendations for isolating the cause:1. Make sure your cell phone is typically not placed on your desk right beside the phone2. Check out this link to track down interference problems - especially making sure your power adapter is plugged into the wall and not into a power board:[...]There have been several similar reviews on this phone, which I would echo, for intercom users only. From our experience, having tested both AT&T and Panasonic 4 line phones, we have found that both phones have similar issues, with Panasonic being the better of the two. Some contributors here reported the AT&T speakers failing after a few days, others two out of three were bad, etc. Here is our experienceWe first owned AT&T's older 974 phones for several years. Eventually after several years, they failed, not on telephone calls but on intercom calls. A loud, unacceptable screech developed. So we purchased two 1070's and found that while the loud screech problem was gone, on one phone the speaker on intercom was unintelligible. Swapped phone positions, the problem traveled with the phone. Ordered a 3rd phone. Same problem to a lesser degree. Returned all three and purchased 2 Panasonic KX-TS4200's.We purchased the Panasonics knowing from the AMZN review board that there was going to be delay in the phone recognizing key presses. Some users couldn't stand it. Others could. We found same, although with a medium-paced, deliberate dial, it was fine. However, in the end, we concluded we could live with it either. But the speaker problem on intercom calls re-emerged, to a lesser, but still not good, level.The AT&T and Panasonic techs won't help you on this. They will just tell you to try doing a hard reset of the phone. But I think we may have fixed it, or at least alleviated it on the Panasonics. The solution, we think, no matter which phone you buy, is to try configuring non-adjacent extension numbers, which are presumably working on just different frequencies and possibly interfering with each other. For example, rather than setting up Ext 11, 12, 13 and 14, try 12, 16, 20 and 24. Can't guarantee it will help, but try it.Of course if you are not an intercom user, or even if you are and don't mind connecting by intercom with either the handset or the earphone, either the AT&T or Panasonic are great phones. But I do believe, with AT&T, there is a higher risk of the intercom speaker system eventually failing - just based on our own 974/1070 experience, plus the reviews on this board. AT&T needs more robust electronics here, and you may have to return a phone, or two, or three to get one that works. Once you do get it right - great system.

I purchased 16 of these phones to replace the AT&T model 955 phones for a customer that were starting to show their age and they needed more than the 12 stations that the older phones would support. After looking over the other four line phones, these seemed to be the best bet. However one out of the sixteen phones was "bad out of the box". The defect was "no speakerphone", a complaint that has been common with this model. To their credit, Amazon promptly replaced the bad phone. The phones have been in service for a week now and so far the staff loves them.The AT&T 1070 phone functions mostly like the AT&T 955 phone system it replaced, but there are a few important differences to note:1. There is no dedicated "all page" button on the 1070. To do an "all page", press "Intercom" then the # key on the dial pad.2. If you are on the phone and a call comes in on another line, the caller ID will NOT automatically display it. This may have been built that way so that "call waiting caller ID" would function as expected. To view the caller ID on another line, press either the < or > key on the navigation cluster to the right of the display.3. Others have reported that all four lines must be the same on all four phones. However the manual states that only line 1 must be common to all the phones in the system. But there is a contradiction in the manual that says only line 4 can be designated as a "private" number. This was not a consideration for us however, as the line appearance is identical on all phones in the system.If you want "music on hold" for these phones, you will need to purchase the model CK-1A4 MOH adapter from Skutch Electronics, list price $325.00. You only need one adapter for the whole system. The adapter is kind of crude, it consists of a control box that sits under the phone and a dongle that is attached over the line status lights. It senses when a line goes on hold by the flash rate of the light. As a consequence there is a bit of a delay before the music starts playing to the caller. The adapter does not supply the music, you must supply your own music source such as a CD-player. In our case I used the mono program feed for the radio station that I installed these phones for.But most of these are minor issues. As long as you only need 4 central office lines and 16 stations or less, these phones are a good deal.

Out of dare

Bueno

This phone has nice features and is easy to use, especially given its price (<$100) compared to other 4 line phones out there. As other reviewers have mentioned, THIS PHONE DOES NOT HAVE CALLER ID (a 1070 model is required for that). We purchased this phone will that fact in mind, which is why I still give it 5 stars. There is very little setup required (simply set the date/time, and assign the phone an extension number), and most features are intuitive to use.All in all, good value.

works great

This was our response to an expanding small business and an aging phone system. Worked well as described, and was very easy to set up. To the best of my knowledge, the intercom works via radio waves; with our fairly long physical building and construction materials such as tin and concrete, there are issues connecting the furthest 2 phones (out of 4). Changing intercom frequencies to non-sequential numbers as recommended by one reviewer does help somewhat, but the system would be better suited to a smaller building. Any larger building or beyond say 4 phones should consider a more "official" system installed by the phone company. All in all pretty good for the price.

After a couple of months (when of course can't return it!) phone started to be unresponsive, i.e. you cannot dial!Need to remove battery, unplug, wait a bit, then the phone reinitializes, and it works again for maximum few days!Basically, this purchase is a total loss!I could not find any link or coordinates to try and have a replacement at least!