New office phone system, non ISDN solution?

Edwards Finance > Phones

Q. We will shortly be moving to a new office. We've so far made use of a fairly bog-standard ISDN PBX solution. For a number of reasons, we'd like to use only analogue lines at our new location. The requirements are: 6 separate incoming numbers, ringing 6 different phones 3 concurrent phone calls (minimum) ability to hold/transfer between the phones 6 separate voicemail boxes If we can do this with a fully DECT solution, all the better. Any ideas on how to achieve this, particularly the 6 incoming numbers, without using ISDN, would be much appreciated. I am not interested in a VoIP system at the present time.

A. First, since you've mentioned a specific provider, I feel it necessary to start by saying that I think gradwell.com is an excellent company, with a great set of products. In addition, I know Peter personally, and he's a great guy. We've trialled a number of VoIP solutions, and I'm just not prepared to make the jump to using one as the primary phone system. Perhaps in a year or two, but not just yet. IMHO reliability and call quality for VoIP to PSTN and PSTN to VoIP calls are not quite there yet. Mobile to VoIP and VoIP to mobile has been even more problematic. It does mean you need a phone wire to each desk - an alternative is to put a rack of bases/chargers by the door, mail trays, etc where people pass in/out. BT Studio DECT phone/charger under twenny squids at Argos. You'll probably need at least one wired phone on the PBX anyway to comply with power fail requirements. Almost any PABX will allow any number to ring all phones or pre-defined groups, if one member of the group is on the phone the other extensions will still ring. Some will allow delayed ringing so one extension would normally ring for a few seconds before others did so. The private side of the exchange isn't really an issue. The problem will be that with 6 discrete numbers on 6 lines each number can only be in use for one conversation. So if 123456 is in use anyone else calling it will get an engaged tone even though the other 5 lines may be free in the office. This is unlike ISDN where the channels and numbers are independent. With ISDN if you have 6 channels all can be in use for calls to one of the 6 numbers or if 5 are in use anyone calling any of the other 5 numbers will get through on the one spare channel. I know you don't want to go fully VoIP and can understand that, but could you use 3 analogue lines for your 'switchboard' number, and people'd DDI numbers on VoIP? If both numbers are on business cards etc then if callers have a problem using the direct line they can call the switchboard. Conversely if the analogue telephony breaks but the ADSL still works (by no means uncommon) then people can try the VoIP numbers. And of course if you have some Ethernet>POTS adapters then people can take their VoIP phone home with them, if they have ADSL at home, and work from there if the office phone system falls apart completely, or if bad weather makes transport difficult.

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