CUCM Phone Locales for use in Australia

[Michael Lee]

Recently I have been asked a question by one of my clients, are there phone localization for CUCM and what is the benefit in installing them in Australia?

I know that for non English speaking countries there are phone and gateway localizations to ensure the correct language is displayed and the correct ring tones are played etc. And I have managed find a local for Australia included in the combined "cm-locale-combined_network-8.5.1.2000.cop.sgn"

I haven't really found any good documentation on the subject for English speaking countries like UK, Australia. The link on the docwiki doesn't really go in to much detail about English speaking languages and the benefits or reasons why you would deploy the locales. http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Cucm-phone-locale-installers

Would installing the cm-locale-combined mean that the phones "user locale" and "network locale" could be configured as Australian?

And would changing the locale mean that the ring tones and codec are set correctly for Australia, e.g. G.711a-law instead of mu-law?

Is there any real benefit of installing the Australian locales?

I look forward to everyone's feedback and comments, thanks in advance

[bvanturn · Accepted solution]

Hi Michael,

The combined network locale allows you to set the network locale to Austratian. This will ensure that the dial tone, ringback, busy tone, ... are set as common in Australia. A user locale is needed to display for example the end user web page or the phone in a different language. A user locale for Australia is not available so you would need to see if it matches better to use English (US) = ENU or English (UK) = ENG user locale. There should be only minor differences between both so you likely may not want to bother with installing ENG as it will need to be reinstalled with each upgrade/install and on each node. Exact info on what user localization is altered in the ENG locale, can be found in the release notes.

[Michael Lee]

Thanks for the information, does it set the default codec g711a-law rather than the system default of u-law?

Sent from Cisco Technical Support iPhone App

[bvanturn]

Locale has no influence on the codec selection.

However if you want to disable g711 mu-law, you can do so in the service parameters.

This parameter was only introduced with 8.6(1) and with engineering special 8.5.1.12014-3 (so higher 8.5(1) ES will also have this available)

[Michael Lee]

Are you able advise what the service parameter is or provide a link to the documentation to disable u-law?

Regards

Sent from Cisco Technical Support iPhone App

[bvanturn]

It should be in the Regions section from the CallManager Service Parameters. There should be

G.711 mu-law Codec Enabled

This parameter determines whether Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Unified CM) allows negotiation of the G.711 A-law audio codec for all, some, or no devices. This parameter applies to both the 64 kbps and 56 kbps versions of G.711 A-law. Valid values specify Enabled for All Devices (calls will be able to use the G.711 A-law codec), Enabled for All Devices Except Recording-Enabled Devices (calls involving recording-enabled devices will not be able to use the G.711 A-law codec), or Disabled (no calls will be able to use the G.711 A-law codec). The G.711 audio codec standard defines two different companding algorithms, mu-law and A-law, each of which is treated as a distinct codec. Another service parameter, G.711 mu-law Codec Enabled, controls the G.711 mu-law codec. You can use this parameter to disable G.711 A-law when you do not want G.711 A-law to be negotiated during a call. Disabling G.711 A-law means that it cannot be used for any call feature, including basic audio and video calls, transcoding, music on hold, announcements, ringback tones, and conferencing. When G.711 A-law is disabled, Unified CM will select the next preferred codec that both parties support (for example, G.729). If there are no other matching codecs between the two parties, Unified CM allocates a transcoder if one is available and if the transcoder is capable of transcoding between the codecs supported by the two parties. If the transcoder allocation fails, the call will fail. If G.711 A-law is the only codec supported by at least one party in a call, and the codec is disabled via this service parameter, then the call will fail. Because Unified CM prefers G.711 mu-law over G.711 A-law, disabling G.711 A-law alone has no effect on whether G.711 mu-law can be negotiated; disabling G.711 mu-law alone allows G.711 A-law to be negotiated rather than G.711 mu-law. To disable the G.711 codec entirely, set this service parameter and the G.711 mu-law Codec Enabled parameter to disabled.

Hope that helps?