Phones for Asterisk and single-pair old phone wiring?

[Thomas Charron]

On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 10:55 AM, Ben Scott <dragonhawk at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 9:44 AM, Thomas Charron <twaffle at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  I looked for a link, but didn't see it in the emails from Ken L.
>> Citel box I assume?
>  Yah, the Citel Portico TVA.  Ken didn't have a direct link, but he
> posted a link to an Asterisk page (for other reasons), and that page
> linked to Citel.  Citel's sales organization appears to be
> incompetent, though.  I'm having a hard time finding anyone who is
> local and can offer a solution package.

  Hrm, I've worked on systems which connected on the SIP side with
one, but they where already in place at an existing location.  Bear in
mind this was like, 4 years ago.  I have some emails out to try to get
more information.

>  If anyone knows of a reasonably local entity who can provide
> consulting and installation services for Asterisk and Citel Portico,
> please refer me!  :-)

  IIRC, they bought them direct from Citel.

>>  That's another curiosity question.  How many stations we talking?
>  We've got a Norstar MICS.  It is currently configured with 96 TCM
> station ports and 20 analog trunk ports, plus a NAM voice mail unit.
> Usage (as of today) is 87 TCM stations and 15 POTS lines.  The new
> building will have somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 stations.
> We'll likely add four or so off-premise IP stations as well.
>  (TCM  = Time Compression Multiplexing.  Nortel proprietary protocol.
>  Digital.  Runs over a single copper pair of voice grade wiring.)

  Hrm, largest density they offer IIRC is 24 ports.  Quick look online
shows about 2500-3k per 24 ports, FYI.

>  Brining TCM stations to our new building requires a non-trivial
> investment.  The distance exceeds maximum for copper TCM, so we need
> to run fiber to the new building and put the TCM station modules in
> the new building.  That also requires fiber "module extenders".  We're
> out of DS-30 fiber ports on the MICS core unit, so we need to add
> another expansion card, plus upgrade the firmware to support that.
>  So the plan is to go IP only in the new building.  This also means
> we can skip running dedicated voice wiring in the new building.  We
> can cover about half the cost of a VoIP upgrade this way, and gain all
> the features a modern VoIP system has.

  Sounds like at least YOUR having fun.  :-D  I'm busy compensating
for mechanical designs.  Pesky medical equipment...

-- 
-- Thomas