[Asterisk-Users] A new pbx for an office in the UK

asterisk at billheckel.com asterisk at billheckel.com
Wed Feb 26 08:21:48 MST 2003


You can do it for less with *.  In addition, you get a lot more functionality than the system they 
are likely specifying for that price and you don't have any ongoing costs from the phone vendor.

Upside:
1.  Cheaper
2.  More features
3.  Easily upgradeable
4.  Great do it yourself feeling when it works!
5.  No change order fees, reprogramming dial plans etc is easy.
6.  Did I say cheaper?
7.  Quick free support network online
8.  Great paid support available (Digium)

Here's the downside:
1. You will become intimately familiar with PBX technology, far more than you likely want to be but 
it is an interesting field.
2. Because of the huge array of features, setting up * takes planning.  If you buy a system, they 
set it up for you ( and charge for it ) saving you some time
3. If there are problems you have to fix them or people may blame you.

I have an installed system with 2 T1s and ~22 people on phones most of the time.  It works quite 
well although I have had some issues that I had to work through.  What I am doing is more complex 
than a normal small office PBX but * handles it quite well.

As far as hardware for your PBX, I would recommend a T400P ( quad T1 card ) and 2 channel banks, 1 
with 8 FXO and one with 24 FXS ports.  New, these may get expensive but they are available used.

Bill

phil wrote:
> Steve B wrote:
> 
>> My office is wanting to replace their pbx as it doesn't support enough 
>> extensions. They have 8 incoming lines, one of which are dedicated to 
>> alarms and one is for the fax machine. The other 6 are for the 
>> ordinary phones. They have about 10 analog extensions but want to 
>> increase this to about 20.
>>
>> They've been quoted about £4500 for a new pbx.
>>
>> My question is could I use Asterisk to do this cheaper? What hardware 
>> would I need? and would this work in the UK? And, perhaps, what else 
>> do I need to know about their present set up in order to ask the right 
>> questions?
>>
>> I know little about phone systems but I am familiar with programming 
>> and network administration (Linux & Windows).
>>
>> TIA,
>> Steve
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Asterisk-Users mailing list
>> Asterisk-Users at lists.digium.com
>> http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
>>
> We are UK based and had a similar requirement and are mid conversion. We 
> opted to junk our analogue lines and move to an ISDN 30, initially with 
> 8 lines but we are going to up this to 30 once it's proven. You could 
> either keep your analogue lines and get a channel bank with 8 fxo ports 
> or in the long term it's better to move to ISDN as after the install 
> cost, the rental is about the same.
> 
> Our hardware now consists of a digium E1 card (30 Exch lines) a digium 
> T1 card to talk to the channel bank. An Adtran TSU 600 with 24fxs ports  
> (£270 on Ebay) which gives up 24 extensions. A Compaq 1600R (ebay £250) 
> dedicated server but any spare machine will do. Don't bother trying to 
> find E1 channel banks as they are very very rare and expensive and no 
> better than the T1's.
> 
> Total cost appx £1250 plus the cost of the phones & a bit of shipping. 
> Any standard pots will work and we use our old Panasonic speakerphones 
> for this.
> 
> The cost of the ISDN install adds appx 1K to this but it allows you to 
> have ddi's so our 8 lines have 24 numbers.
> 
> All in all I'd say it can be done very cheaply and effectively. It seems 
> rock solid and we are currently messing with the dialplans and IVR etc 
> before we go live. I'm a programmer but linux newbie and have found it 
> fairly painless to get up and running with most questions answered on 
> this mailing list.
> 
> Hope this helps
> 
> Phil
> 
> 
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> Asterisk-Users at lists.digium.com
> http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
> 
> 





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