Switch (small PBX) on BT Home Highway ?

Edwards Finance > Phones

Q. Anyone out there got a small PBX that works OK on their HH ? Anyone out there know why small switches are not compatible with the analogue HH lines or are they ?

A. I often have a BT Ultimate 106 connected to an analogue port on BT HH. A customer has both analogue ports of a BT BH connected to two analogue ports on a Panasonic DBS PBX - no problems with that either. You can connect it up no problem at all. I would a cable with standard BT plugs to connect to the home highway from the Revelation (Did I sort you out with the cables when you visited?) Just remember that the highway has two channels, so if you're on the internet, you can only get out on one analogue line at a time. Perhaps the helpline were assuming that the OP wanted to connect an ISDN switch to the digital port of the HH installation? There would be problems with that because AFAIK you can't get multiple numbers on that port. I can think of a couple of reasons they say this. Firstly I would expect most switches to be hard wired into the old style termination box, and HH cannot provide this. You always get the "normal" BT style socket. Secondly for two lines you would normally have a by-pass (I think thats the right term) number. Any way a number that when dialed will connect to either exchange line depending on which is free. Again this is not available on HH. Of course you could just give out your digital number and get a PABX that works with ISDN and then you can have two calls on the same number.... I imagine the reason is you can't get line hunting for incoming calls with HH. I think you can subscribe to "call forward on busy" on both numbers, which will achieve almost the same thing, but you pay for the diverted part of the call (at local call rate, obviously) and I'm not sure what happens to the caller ID. If this doesn't bother you it would be the cheapest solution. The more common way these days is to connect an ISDN PBX to the digital port. This handles incoming and outgoing call collisions almost perfectly, gives faster call setup and better voice quality. I use a Cybergear Gold on a Business Highway line that also passes the caller ID (and name of caller, if known) to ordinary caller display phones. It's also a router and firewall for internet calls. But it's not cheap and you would have to change your phone number (i.e. tell everyone your digital number).

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