[Asterisk-biz] Asterisk Installation Consulting

[alex at pilosoft.com]

On Wed, 15 Dec 2004, Joshua Vickery wrote:

> I work for a small company that has outgrown its Meridian PBX.  We have
> been quoted a price of $12k to replace the existing phone system with a
> new one that will support up to 270 connected phones.  We currently have
> 70 Norstar telephones.  It seems a bit of a pity to spend all that money
> on an old proprietary phone system, but it is certainly cheaper than the
> quotes we got for VoIP solutions (~100k).  I did some research, and it
> seems that given our existing wiring (all of our phones appear to be
> wired with Cat5 cable with RJ45 jacks on a separate physical network
> from our data network) we could replace all of the existing telephones
> with VoIP phones and use an Asterisk PBX to communicate with them all.  
> With the Cisco phones going for $400/each this too seemed out of reach.  
> However, I have seen cheaper phones available, down to less than $100 a
> piece.
100$ phones are worth about as much as you pay for them. They are 
appropriate for grandma on bedtable. The decent business-like phones are 
unfortunately still 200-300$ each (7960 and ip500).

If CPE cost is the tough expense to swallow, consider going with TDM-based 
solution and ADSI phones. (These are plugged into channel banks, etc, 
etc).

> Now the "biz" part.  I'm a software developer who just happens to be
> interested in networking and telephony.  I can't do it myself, so we
> would need to hire a consultant.  If this project seems doable, I'm
> looking for recommendations on where we might find such a consultant.
I only do NYC :(

> P.S. I tried to join this list, but never received a confirmation email.
> Since I don't know my status I would appreciate it if anyone who
> responds sends a copy of the response directly to my email address
> (jvickery at healthdec.com)
I think you are on the list alright.