[Asterisk-Users] [OT] Centrex Question

[Gabriel Afana]

> I haven't dealt with Centrex for a long time, and one of my customers is
> being courted heavily by a Sprint salesperson.
>
> Am I not correct in assuming that each "line" of Centrex corresponds to
> an "extension" in the PBX world?
>
> This site has 2 POTS lines and 5 extensions, and they told me that for
> the same thing they're paying right now (~$40/POTS line) they will be
> getting two Centrex "lines" that will do the same thing.
>
> The way I understood it, each of those two Centrex lines is an extension.
>
> In general, would they still be paying their POTS fees, too?


Hmm, I read a little more (checked the index) about Centrex and I found this
as well:

Centrex phone lines are POTS lines with special, business-releated calling
features like four-digit private endpoint dialing.  These are the lines on
which you have to dial a 9 to get out.  Centrex has the same economics of
POTS - you generally pay a monthly fee that covers a certain amount of
utilization on the line; after that, you pay by the minute.  Centrex is less
widely available than POTS.  It's often absent from residential and rural
areas.  Like POTS, each Centrex line can support one phone call at a time.

Seems the Centrex lines are exactly like regular POTS, you just get some
added features.  So I am not 100% sure how they have it worked out because I
would think each POTS line which have a number (555-1111 and 555-1112 would
be extenion 1111 and 1112 within the Centrex group).  However, you say they
have two lines but 5 extensions.

The only thing I can think is they have two POTS which give them only two
simultaneous calls at any given time, but have 5 telephone numbers assigned
to this Centrex and just have the two Centrex lines in hunts group...but
then again this would imply that if two extensions are talking directly to
eachother, this would be utilizing the only two POTS available (since its
Centrex and has to go all the way to the CO), leaving no available lines for
incoming calls.....no?

- Gabe