Phones for Asterisk and single-pair old phone wiring?

[Gerry Hull]

My question is:  What is your purpose for swiching to Asterisk (IP-based
telephony)?   Is it because you want high-performance
end points (as you describe)? If so, you are only going to get those from
either pure-IP sets, or a proprietary system such as the Norstar or other
Digital set on standard POTS wiring.

If you want to go with SIP for trunk-side reasons (low cost per minute,
least-cost-routing, etc)
then you can just front-end the Norstar with a media gateway, and,
optionally a softswitch (like FreeSwitch)
or a flavor of Asterisk to get IVR, conferencing and other cool features of
IP-based open-source telephony.

If you simply want to replace an old PBX, then your looking at expensive
solutions to get IP to the endpoints, such as rewiring, network-over-POTS
converters, or wireless

Gerry

On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 10:34 AM, Ben Scott <dragonhawk at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
>  Anyone know of any kind of enhanced telephone set that can be
> connected to an Asterisk-based system using plain old telephone phone
> wiring?
>
> Enhanced telephone set = Something more than a plain old telephone
> set.  Programmable buttons for hold, line selection, special features,
> etc.  Option for an LCD.  Like the proprietary digital telephone sets
> used with Avaya, Nortel, NEC, and other "key" and "PBX" premises
> telephone systems.
>
> Plain old telephone wiring = A single pair of copper wires, guaranteed
> to conduct electricity and nothing more.  Not Category 3 compliant,
> let alone Category 5.  Forget Ethernet for VoIP.
>
>  I've got a building full of 50 year old telephone wiring, which
> works fine for our Norstar system.  I'm looking at upgrading to a
> VoIP-capable system, and would love to be able to switch to Asterisk.
> But rewiring the building with 4-pair Cat 5 to support
> Ethernet-connected, PoE-powered telephone sets is infeasible.  (And
> there are a non-trivial number of phones without convenient existing
> LAN jacks nearby.)  So whatever I go with has to have a way to support
> old wiring.
>
>  I'm looking at Nortel's BCM (basically a hybrid Norstar/VoIP box),
> but it's expensive, doesn't do SIP, and Nortel is not overly customer
> friendly.  I'd love to use something like Asterisk instead.
>
>  I'm envisioning a semi-proprietary solution that uses Asterisk and
> VoIP, but also offers equipment suitable for old wiring. Maybe some
> kind of PCI line card, or Ethernet-connected expansion module, which
> connects proprietary digital sets to the Asterisk architecture.
>
>  Connecting plain old telephones to analog adapters isn't an
> acceptable solution.  All the desk sets on old wiring would either (1)
> loose features beyond making telephone calls, or (2) require hook
> flash and dialing feature codes to do anything (too cumbersome for the
> users).
>
>  I suspect no such thing exists, but I figure I'd ask.
>
> -- Ben
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