Upgrading Cisco IP Phone Firmware for CUCME Simplified

So as I mentioned, I’ve recently gotten into the voice realm at work. For the past few days, I’ve been installing and configuring CUCME and CUE on a 2901 router for a small satellite office. For someone who’s never worked with this technology before, it was admittedly a bit overwhelming at first. I get the general idea of what is supposed to happen, but actually making it happen has been a different story.

One problem I ran into is that the 7942 phones we had were displaying the wrong time. After verifying that all of the time zone and clock settings on the router and the ISM were correct, I was lost. I then ran across this link on Cisco’s website. Simple enough…seems like the firmware could affect the time being displayed on the phone. Weird, but ok.

So I begin on the mission learning how to upgrade the firmware. I like to think that I am relatively competent. I will however, sometimes glance over small details that can make a lot of difference. After finally ending up here, (from here — probably the more important link), I found the firmware files, but couldn’t figure out which load file to use. Therein lies the details…

If you look at the section labeled “Important Information about Configuring Cisco Unified IP Phone Support” – it tells you to “configure only the filenames that are marked with an asterisk (*) in the table below.” HA! Well, that was an important fact…the one that I glanced over probably 5 times and didn’t register for some reason.

Anyhow, the simplified version (which is presumably what you ended up here for) is this:

1. Find your CUCME version at this link
2. Find your phone(s) model (and protocol) in the first table shown (Cisco Unified IP Phone Support) – take note of which file has the asterisk next to it
3. Download the firmware files from this link (CCO Login Required – Click Voice and Unified Communications, then IP Telephony, then IP Phones, and then select your model,  protocol, and which firmware version you want to use.
4. Download the zip file to your computer – in my case it was the cmterm-7942_7962-sccp.8-5-4.zip file
5. Extract the files, and upload them all using copy tftp flash
6. Once you have all files loaded in flash, do this:
   1. (config)#telephony-service
   2. (config-telephony)#load PhoneModelNumber FilenameWithAsterisk Example: (config-telephony)#load 7942 SCCP42.8-5-3S.loads (The documentation says to use the file extension for CUCME version >= 7.0.1, but I also saw something that said don’t. I tried both ways and it seemed to work. YMMV)
7. Once all that is done, reload your IP phone (either power cycle it or reset it through the IOS or CUCME GUI)
8. Ideally, the phone will see the new firmware configuration and proceed with the upgrade

Please note that there may be some caveats/prereq’s that I didn’t include here (I don’t think there are, but I didn’t triple check everything). As always, this worked for me, it may or may not work for you. Hopefully, it will.

I hope this serves as an easy to follow guide to upgrading the firmware on your Cisco IP phone. I’m sure for those of you that have done it many times, its rather simple. But for voice noobs such as myself, it was quite a PITA.