Telephone Question...

[The Natural Philosopher]

No, I don't think he does.

[Jerry.]

But on a pbx you are not limited to just 5 phones !

Why do the words 'IMM' [1] and 'simple' seem to go together so well ?...

[1] yes I know 'IMM' is not a real word.

[Andy Hall]

You're Billy Graham and I claim my £5

.andy

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[Andy Hall]

This would involve having about 500cc less insulation in the house and would result in 0.000001W more energy loss.

.andy

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[Toby]

In defence of the simple, why would anyone require more than five independent extensions? It's not as if there are the constant moves, changes & additions of the office environment. DECT for the masses - PBX for the technologically curious.

Now a pbx as a learning exercise, that's entirely justified, unless you are a dim-witted director of a telecoms company and only want one because all the other directors are getting them; you will abandon it and use two mobiles all the time instead, not that I have ever worked for a company that had directors like these ;-)

If you like pbx's then check out SIP phones.

[Andy Hall]

I have quite a few more than that.

With the PBX I can have:

- 4 or more ISDN lines with up to 10 numbers on each. (MSNs are cheap)

- separate domestic and several business numbers

- fax for each

- modems for each

- ISDN backup routers

- separate phone numbers and ring tones for the kids

- call logging, forwarding and redirection for each

- voicemail

- computer/telephony integration

- etc.

DECT for basic functionality if you don't mind the limitations PBX for those who understand and need the facilities

The PBX equivalents are still somewhat expensive, however.

.andy

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[Huge]

5 bedrooms 3 bathrooms 3 reception rooms 2 halls garage shed outside the front door

That makes 16.

[Alex Threlfall]

asterisk is a cheap choice actually...

[Dave Plowman]

Err, a phone in every room that can't be lost or left in the wrong place, like a DECT handset?

DECT for those who can't be bothered doing the job properly. It has its uses, but like all these 'wireless' things has many disadvantages.

I'd like to hear from someone who's replaced a household PABX with a DECT system before believing it truly is as good.

[Owain]

"Andy Hall" wrote |

You're catching on :-)

| BTW. What's TRUnks? I haven't heard of that one. Does it | have to do with some of the early dialling codes being derived | from the first letters of the place name?

AFAIK from the Edinburgh director area there was a separate code to dial for TOL calls to adjacent exchanges and for TRUnk calls to distant exchanges. Possibly TOL was worked on demand and TRU was worked on delay.

Owain

[Andy Hall]

Ah right.

I know it used to be possible to tie up all the circuits between a town and a village exchange by repeatedly dialling the local codes back and forth.

This was one reason why this was largely done away with when upgrades were done in the 80s and after.

.andy

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[The Natural Philosopher]

I do, for a start. Ive got two in this office here, one voice one modem.

Then there is the hall, the kitchen, two doorphones and three bedrooms to date. Plus the annex bedroom for guests.

With 8 telephone ports I am stuck with switching the phones around a little. 12 would have been ideal. Might by an extension card one day.

Lets not forget the one in the garage, and the one down the garden :-) Although here, I agree a DECT is *almost* useful.

Quite simply, if you have enough rooms, you need something. PABX suits me reasonably well. It doesn't go flat, the phones are cheap and very replaceable. It handles two incoming lines easily and I could vector incoming calls wherever I want them to go if I had a need.

It's not as if there are the constant moves,

[IMM]

Madness comes in many forms.

[IMM]

I didn't build my house.

< snip tripe >

[IMM]

Wow...

[John Rumm]

Repeatedly doing the same thing, and yet expecting different results is I believe one definition...

Perhaps someone should tell Gordon that his (nu) fiscal policy never worked when all the other (old) labour chancellors tried it.

[John Rumm]

If you have a spare external line on the PBX, and a suitable ADSL router then you can add a VoIP gateway for under 70 quid these days...

e.g.

[Andy Hall]

This looks like a means to connect a standard phone or a PBX exchange side line to IP - presumably to another one of these devices on the other side of a "broadband" connection.

I was thinking more in terms of SIP or H323 phones plus PBX equivalent to go to either analogue PSTN, ISDN or IP trunks. That seems to be a more expensive hobby.....

.andy

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[John Rumm]

I think the chepest one there is H323 rather than SIP (although they do a firmware update to support SIP as a free download). You can use them peer to peer, or more commonly you use an external VoIP terminating service to get you back to PSTN. That way you eliminate the origination section of the call charge - handy for international calls.

The gateways accept a connection to a single POTS handset (or several on the bigger ones) and have a RJ45 for connecting to your ethernet and thence the ADSL/Broadband router. You should be able to support at least

4 concurrent calls over a standard 512/256K ADSL line (you can trade quality against bandwidth if required).

The typical setup with a PBX would be to use the gateway to provide additional "external" lines to the PBX. That way you don't incure any additional cost for IP aware phones or PBXs etc.

[Andy Hall]

Sure. Understood. I was thinking of an alternate to a PBX using IP phones and a gateway. This is not yet that cheap, although the phones are now < £100.

The solution of the type of gateway you mention is rather like the Mercury box concept although over over IP of course. Benefit is hopefully of reduced call charges.

.andy

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