Reinstall the firmware on a Polycom SoundPoint

How to reinstall the firmware on Polycom SoundPoint devices and unlock them for use with Telzio.

Telzio enables you to use existing IP phones, but before you can configure your phones with Telzio, you may need to reinstall the software on the phone if it has been locked by the previous carrier.

Important: Flashing a Polycom's firmware may remove the phone's factory certificate, which will cause the phone to be unable to connect to Polycom's ZTP service for auto provisioning.

By reinstalling the software on the IP phone, you will reset the phone back to its original factory settings. While on some phones you can simply hit a Factory Reset button, Polycom phones can be locked to a single vendor, making it necessary to completely reinstall the software. Reinstalling the software on an IP phone is often referred to as flashing the firmware.

In this article, you’ll learn how to break carrier-locked software on your Polycom IP phone. This guide covers instructions to reinstall firmware for the Polycom Soundpoint IP330, and can also be followed to reinstall the firmware for other models in the series.

Manually updating firmware of flashing the firmware on your IP phone may void your warranty and Telzio assumes no responsibility for broken, bricked or other complications that may arise by following this guide.

Steps for flashing the firmware on Polycom SoundPoint IP phones:

  1. Download the bootloader
  2. Find the SIP software application
  3. Run the TFTP application
  4. Prepare the files
  5. Host the files
  6. Configure the phone for firmware flashing
  7. Disable Trivial FTP

What you'll need

  • The bootloader for the phone
  • The new SIP software application for the phone
  • A TFTP application that can host the files for your phone

Download the bootloader

The bootloader for the Polycom SoundPoint can be downloaded from the Polycom support site.

Find the SIP software application

  1. Go to Polycom’s Software Release Matrix
  2. Find the IP320/330 column
  3. Scroll down to the row that says Yes for the column

At the time of writing, this is version 3.3.5. We’re taking the “Split” variation for this guide.

Run the TFTP application

Trivial FTP (TFTP) is a file transport protocol to flash the software on the Polycom phone. TFTP is different than FTP and SFTP. You can use PumpKIN TFTP Server, which is a simple stand-alone application that accepts TFTP requests and works with Windows and OSX.

  1. Download PumpKIN
  2. Look at the right section of the page, under TFTP server and client, and select binary downloads (Be careful to avoid banner ads with the text Download Now)
  3. Download the latest version for your operating system.

When run, the exe-file extracts the actual PumpKIN software into a directory of your choice. It can be uninstalled in Add/Remove Programs later if you want to remove it.

Prepare the files

  1. To prepare, we need to extract the two zip files from Polycom (Bootloader + SIP Software), into the same directory
  2. Place the contents of both zip files into a directory, in this case named tftp-root

Host the files

  1. Open the PumpKIN TFTP program, and press Options
  2. Set the TFTP filesystem root (download path) to where you placed the extracted files (tftp-root)
  3. Enable Allow access to subdirectories
  4. Set Read Request Behavior to Give all files
  5. Set Write Request Behavior to Take all files

Steps 4-5 will save you from confirming every time the phone wants to access or send a file, which will happen frequently during this process.

Configure the phone for firmware flashing

To flash the phone, you need to enter its setup while it’s booting.

  1. If your phone is already turned on, remove the power and plug it back in
  2. When the phone starts, you’ll see the message Waiting for network to initialize
  3. Press the Setup button
  4. Enter the default password 456
  5. Press Down and select Server Menu
  6. When you reach Server Type, press Edit and press the Right button until it shows Trivial FTP
  7. Press OK
  8. When you reach Server Address, type in the IP address of your computer running PumpKIN
  9. Press Edit and then a->1A to enable inserting numberss (the star/asterisk button inserts a period)
  10. Enter the IP, and press OK
  11. Next, you’ll be asked for Server User, which you can ignore
  12. Press Exit until you get to Exit Option
  13. Click Save & Reboot

Your phone will reboot and connect to the pumpkin server to start downloading the new bootloader and firmware.

If PumpKIN asks you to give access to a new connection, select Yes.

You’ll start seeing activity in PumpKIN when the process starts. The phone will reboot a few times during this process, and eventually boot up in a working state.

Disable Trivial FTP

When the firmware installation is complete, you'll need to disable the Trivial FTP functionality.

  1. Press Menu
  2. Go to Settings
  3. Select Advanced
  4. Select Admin Settings
  5. Select Network Configuration
  6. Scroll down and select Server Menu
  7. Press down once, and edit the Server address
  8. Press the < < option to erase
  9. Hit OK
  10. Press the Left button a few times until the phone asks if you want to save the configuration
  11. Select Yes
Due to the fact that Polycom has hundreds of different firmware versions for their product lines, Telzio is unable to provide technical support on Polycom products at this time.