[Asterisk-Users] Recomendations for an ISDN-PBX to use with asterisk

[Jamie Neil]

Quoting Oliver Brandt:
> Hi,
>
> I'm planning to buy a new ISDN-PBX (I hope this is the right term for an
> ISDN phone system). I would also like to connect it to asterisk. As far
> as I know there is no ISDN card where I can connect an ISDN-Phone to
> directly working together with asterisk (please correct me if I'm
> wrong). So what I was thinking of doing was to get a regular ISDN
> PBX and add a second internal S0 bus which I'd connect to asterisk using
> chan_capi. Now to place a call through asterisk I'd first have to dial
> into asteriks and then have asterisk give me a dialtone and recognice
> dtmf. Is there any way to just prefix the phonnumber with lets say a 9
> and then have the PBX transmit the rest of the number to asteriks so
> that I would not have to go through two dialtones? Any suggestions on
> what PBX to use if this is possible? It's supposed to be for a private
> home so I should not be some really expensive professional one...

I though this sounded like a good idea too, so I looked around for a small
PBX in the UK. First problem was that they are like rocking horse manure
here, and the few that you can get are quite expensive.

Undeterred I decided to look abroad, and picked one up for about EUR120 or
so while on a visit to Munich. It is called a TELNET WILLI (made by Telebau
I think) and has 6 analogue extensions plus an internal S0 bus (required for
connection to *) - seemed perfect (also kapejod mentioned that he had used
one of these).

Unfortunately, the PBX is designed purely for the German market and so there
is NO English documentation at all. As my German is VERY basic, I've had a
really tough time getting it configured (hours of cutting and pasting into
babelfish - German technical terms do not translate well :( ).

After extensive hair tearing I did manage to get the PBX to work and I've
even managed to make and recieve calls through * with it, but there are
still niggles that stop me using it properly. I think the impedence might be
wrong for UK handsets (something about the sound isn't right). The double
dialtone thing is annoying (it does have a "Baby Call" function that could
be used to get around this, but I've run out of enthusiasm for it at the
moment). The dialtone and ring are unfamiliar and are not user configurable.
The power supply is brick style with a 2 pin euro plug which makes adapting
it for UK use difficult.

After all the effort, I've decided to shelve it at for the moment and try
some 7940's from Ebay (around ?90 + ?20 for a PSU) or the new FXS card from
Digium instead.

Jamie