Telephone system vendor source?

Edwards Finance > Phones

Q. I need a source for a telephone system unit that will control calls from generic touch tone telephones rather than only from proprietary system instruments. If there is a better newsgroup to ask this question on please let me know.

A. There are bound to be a ton of telephone system suppliers in your area. Try the yellow pages. Local phone companies often sell business systems as well. I know the AT&T Partner/Partner II system supported analog phone devices, aka POTS (plain old telephone service). That business has since been spun off to Avaya. Most system vendors should support this since nearly everyone needs to plug in a computer modem or fax machine. I have not run across any "business phone system" which uses generic touch tone phones - they don't have the necessary extra features/functions needed for use with multiple phone lines & multiple phones (stations) with internal station-to-station call capability (which normally requires two telephone lines). Modern day business phone systems with all these things already engineered in their phones & small KSU (this is where phone lines from the phone company and the wires from phone jacks in the building terminate in a convenient punch block) come in so many convenient sizes. Starting from something like 4 x 8 (4 phone lines & 8 telephones), 6 x 12, 8 x 24, 16 x 48, etc., these KSU units are less than the size of a briefcase. 24 x 64, 32 x 128, 64 x 256 type medium size phone systems can get expensive & elaborate, but still a bargain considering that you basically get the functionality of what used to be in a refrigerator sized PBX (private branch exchange) in 3 or 4 briefcase sized units. When several hundred incoming phone lines are required (means there might be more than a thousand phones/workers in the building), I think a full blown PBX is still needed if a professional phone system is needed. If you want to have some features added to 2 or 3 phones (so that they can be used like business phones), you might want to call your local phone company. They might have a small business package which gives you the necessary features for just a few phones without you having to add any additional hardware and using same phones that you have. But you might have to pay the business phone rate ($50 to $60 per month) plus extra feature charges, so whatever you save initially by not having to buy extra hardware (KSU & special phones) will be gone within a year or two with higher monthly phone bills. With so many small companies (dot.com's of the late 90's) no longer in business, I would think that there are thousands of surplus phone systems that the dealers picked up at liquidation sales, and you should be able to buy those at great prices (supply and demand equation definitely favors the consumer side nowadays). Another option for you might be cell phones. I notice that now most small buz owners just issue cell phones to employees. No dedicated phone wires or extra hardware is required. If you move from building to building, you don't have to get new phone numbers & go through expense of rewiring the phone system, either. In fact, I won't be surprised that 5 to 10 years from now, almost everything will become wireless as desktop computers become obsolete as most PC's become laptops, notebooks or Palm-like devices that fit in your shirt pocket (cell phone & wireless modem will be included in these future portable computers, of course) and running a phone/data line through the ceilings & walls might become a relic of the past like horse-drawn buggies. One exception might be fiber runs to "super workstation computers" and servers which will do the job of entire data centers of today.

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