Phone system for 2 person, 3 line home office

Edwards Finance > Phones

Q. I am looking for recommendations for a 2, 3 or 4 line phone system for a small (3 extensions, 3 lines as in 1 residential, 1 "modem" and 1 business line) home office, with speakerphone, intercom, paging and transfer (to another extension) features, that also will interoperate with plain old phones and modems. By interoperate I mean that the line-in-use indicators will light up if someone picks up a regular telephone on a line, and the phone won't auto select that line for dial out when it is in use by a regular phone or modem.

A. You dont want much do you? Panasonic makes a nice 2 line phone with intercom the number excapes me right now, also GE /Tompson has a 4 line phone with intercom both have speaker phone and line preferance. neather will light the line lamp when the modem is in use. The only phone systems with jacks in the phones for auxillery devices will be far more than you will be willing to pay for. If you want to go the PBX route there are several posablitys. The panasonic KX-T 308 will support devices like generic phones and modems, you will need at least one Panasonic LCD phone for programing , and the main answer point. There is the Tanstel SK-408 ( which I sell) that will work simeraly but can provide 4 lines as opposed to Panasonics 3 lines, and the programing is far more flexable for customising the system. I think those would be the Panasonic KX-TS400 and GE 2-9450. I'm surprised that they won't even light the lamp when the modem picks up. Other non-intercom phones from those manufacturers have line-in-use indicators that must simply detect off-hook status on the line. Are their intercom phones actually less capable in this regard? Does anyone know of any phone that touts an auxilliary data port where the data port is more than just a straight pass through? How does the KSU based products (that you have) work if it is programmed to have a line and it just disappears? Will it indicate that the line is "in use"? Here is what I am thinking: With the PBX at the office it offers this. With a little wiring at the core terminal block and a few Radio Shack 'Tele-Protectors' (or such type product) I got the best of both worlds. This allows the PBX to work as expected (line in use, intercom, etc) and allowed a non-PBX based product to grab a line that is shared. It also doesn't allow the modem to grab a in-use line on the PBX or the PBX to interrupt a non-PBX based call as it would try and grab the line showing "in use" as it knew no extension was using that line. The only down side I've run into doing it this way is if you go to use the modem you will simply get "NO DIAL TONE" (but can easily look @ your desk phone and see someone is using it). I have tried this setup with a few friends PBX's with limited success as not all PBX's (KSU's?) lines will light if they are programmed and simply aren't there anymore...

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