[Asterisk-Users] 8 lines - best approach

[Darren Martz]

The problem is when replacing a Nortel system. The existing phones become
useless, so we're looking at either using totally IP based phones or using a
channel bank with different office phones.

The only problem is finding an IP phone that is decent for business,
supports multiple lines (at least 2) and is reasonably priced.

This is more difficult than I expected. The voip-info.org site has excellent
information, but it seems to show the IP phone coverage is still in the
early adopter stage. Please correct me if my statement is wrong, I'd love
for it to be wrong.

My thinking is that most of us are looking for hardware based IP Phone's
that work well with Asterisk and begin to go beyond the traditional business
phone.

So my first step is to find the most cost effective way to utilize our
traditional lines and move on from there.

Cheers,
Darren

-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Tilghman
Lesher
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2004 5:35 PM
To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] 8 lines - best approach

On Friday 23 January 2004 12:18, Paul Mahler wrote:
> On Friday, January 23, 2004 at 8:04 AM, Steven Critchfield wrote:
> > On Fri, 2004-01-23 at 09:30, Darren Martz wrote:
> > > I have 8 lines coming into an existing PBX system and am looking
> > > for a cost
> > > effective way to replace the existing system with Asterisk. We
> > > need some of
> > > the features in Asterisk, including its ability to support remote
> > > offices (long distance savings).
> > >
> > > At first glance this appears to require a T100P card and a channel
> > > bank, but
> > > that seems rather expensive. My estimated price on that would be
> > > roughly $2600 for 8 lines given that system - perhaps my estimate
> > > is way off????
> > >
> > > Is there another way that is more cost effective?
> >
> > That number sounds about right. It is likely that it will be less,
> > but budgeting that much for hardware is a good start.
> 
> Do you have to continue to use the existing handsets? You should look
> at replacing the existing phones with SIP phones.

He did say "cost-effective".  Last I checked, 24 SIP phones (unless they
are Grandstreams) will cost far more than a channel bank.

-Tilghman