The Vista 350 telephone and the birth of SaaS

November 8th, 2006 by Mitch Brisebois

Warning: this is a retrospective post… don’t worry, it concludes with a happy “today” message for the Software as a Service industry (SaaS).

In 1988, the top song was George Michael’s Faith… or Tracy Chapman’s Fast Cars – depending on the chart. Not a bad soundtrack to this post. I had just joined Northern Telecom’s lab – Bell Northern Research.Vista 350One of my first projects was to design a phone (correction: “consumer appliance”) that would enable third party interactive services to be delivered via ordinary analog phone lines. This project was sponsored by the Bank of Boston and BellSouth. We hacked up a data protocol, built a few hundred phones and conducted trials for the “home banking machine” in Nashville. That was 1992. The phone was code-named SESAME … as in “open Sesame”…a new portal to service. By the way, the awful acronym stood for Subscriber Enhanced Services Access Made Easy. The phone is pictured here – a three line bit-mapped display with softkeys.

The results were “OK”… but the phone looked just like a phone. There was no way the device could support a $250 price tag. Vista 350Back to the drawing board. The next year we created the concept for the Vista 350… the market research was definitive: no one was going to pay $350 for a “phone”. So Northern (soon to be Nortel) compromised. We got to build the Vista 350 (with it’s large display and softkey interface.) We also build the Vista 250 – with a tiny display and hardkey interface. The 250 was going to sell for $250. Both the 350 and 250 operated on the same firmware. Common sense would dictate that the cheaper version of the product would prevail. So wrong.

The 250 didn’t see the light of day! The 350 took off beyond everyone’s expectations – eventually selling a couple million units. The analog protocol developed to deliver data over ordinary telephone lines ended up as a Bellcore standard (TR-1373).

But did people buy it for access to those third-party services that was the genesis of the project? No. The Vista 350 (branded in Canada), PowerTouch 350 (branded elsewhere) was just a great phone. It didn’t need a user guide. The softkey user interface was contextual… everything made sense. The industrial design was out of this world at the time. It’s still influences industrial design for current VoIP phones. Its design was even honoured with its own Canada Post stamp… The industrial designer was friend and colleague Cliff Read. We share a couple of US patents on that one.

Vista 350The 350 began its retail life in 1995. At the same time, the web was catching fire – growing exponentially every week. Companies saw the web as the future delivery pipe for their services.

Despite it’s huge success as a product, the 350 failed as a services appliance. Despite its failure, we learned it was possible to open up the “fortress telco” to deliver third party services. We also learned that the quality of the user experience has a huge impact on margins and customer loyalty.

Ok – so the 350 wasn’t really the “birth” of SaaS. It was just another step towards Service Oriented Networks.

So, fire up your old “Minitel” and comment this post!

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  1. Fred
    February 26th, 2009 at 13:08 | #1

    Hi, I checked out another receiver and it was fine so that appears to be my problem. Any idea where I could get a new off white receiver?
    Thanx Fred

  2. Fred
    February 26th, 2009 at 18:52 | #2

    Anyone know where I can find a handset for the vista 350 in off white.
    Fred

  3. February 26th, 2009 at 22:06 | #3

    ebay?

  4. Don DeLand
    March 4th, 2009 at 11:39 | #4

    Anyone know where I can get replacement transformers for my Nortel PowerTouch 350 single line?

  5. naghza
    March 9th, 2009 at 13:20 | #5

    i have vista 350, whose i-selsct services were working fine, since i moved to a new location ,every thing is gone. Can anybody guide me how to down load the services.

  6. March 9th, 2009 at 14:22 | #6

    Your services were provide by your telephone company – did you switch to a different telco, or change your service package?

  7. Gilles
    March 17th, 2009 at 18:15 | #7

    @Kim
    Bonjour
    Pour des pièces, tu peux me contacter par mon site

    www3.sympatico.ca/giltech

    Bye Gilles

  8. March 20th, 2009 at 18:45 | #8

    I’ve owned the 350 since 1997, was living in Nashville at the time, had BellSouth, paid for it a little bit every month in my phone bill, it was an expensive indulgence, but I had to have it! Now I’m back in New York and I will never part with this phone (unless she quits me!) I love it.

    I have had few problems with it over the years. The last 2 years I have noticed the display getting skip lines in several areas, like missing pixels, but seems to happen only when it is summer, humid and hot. It becomes unreadable then slowly comes back to “all good” after a few months and has been fine since last fall. Weird stuff.

    My wishlist…only that I could add more than 50 names in my directory.

    I called Verizon to get an update number for the phone, they didn’t know what I was talking about. I don’t think I even need it..Everything works great, my features all work, Caller ID, CW, Copy to Dir, Options,
    everything, even with my DSL filter from Verizon, I got no complaints. A FINE design of electronic functionality, kudos!

  9. March 20th, 2009 at 19:14 | #9

    Thanks Allison, we really appreciate that. The 350 was one of the first phones to use “brand-new” flash memory. This is the type that USB sticks use now. Back then it was pricey – but the benefit was that the memory would keep stuff without power. 50 names does seems low by today’s standards! LOL

    How many electronic devices do people keep and use for over 12 years??

  10. hans rené
    March 23rd, 2009 at 05:09 | #10

    j’ai un téléphone nortel 350 mais j’ai un problème problème d’affichage de l’identité de l’appelant.merci d’aider à résoudre le problème.

  11. Paul Renaud
    March 26th, 2009 at 08:42 | #11

    Hey Mitch,

    It’s obvious that the Vista 350 needs its own community website! Perhaps entitled “Pimp my Vista”, or something along the lines of restoring classic cars.

    IMHO, any product still in use 30 years later deserves its very own web presence.

    Cheers, paul

  12. March 26th, 2009 at 11:25 | #12

    You’re right Paul… the community seems to have found a home in this post! There something in the works for vista350.com

  13. Anonymous
    March 27th, 2009 at 05:00 | #13

    hans rené :j’ai un téléphone nortel 350 mais j’ai un problème problème d’affichage de l’identité de l’appelant.merci d’aider à résoudre le problème. j’ai un téléphone Nortel 350 mais j’ai un problème problème d’affichage de l’identité de l’appelant. merci d’aider à résoudre le problème.

    @hans rené

  14. Rena
    April 10th, 2009 at 23:07 | #14

    Help! After many, many years of flawless service, my 350 is on the blitz! The screen is working fine, but there is a distorting buzz on the line, when I pick it up. The buzz makes it impossible to hear the other party, though it seems that they can hear me a bit.

    Is there someone who can repair my 350????

    -Heartbroken in Atlanta

  15. April 11th, 2009 at 20:27 | #15

    is the buzz just in the handset or on speakerphone too?

  16. Anonymous
    April 25th, 2009 at 13:46 | #16

    naghza :
    i have vista 350, whose i-selsct services were working fine, since i moved to a new location ,every thing is gone. Can anybody guide me how to down load the services.

  17. Mark
    June 10th, 2009 at 11:50 | #17

    Can anyone tell me how to reset the message button on this phone. or a service number we can contact for the US West 350. Thank you for your help

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