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Anyone know anything about installing a switchboard in an office

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  • 27-01-2005 8:42pm
    #1
    remoteboy
    Registered Users Posts: 2,039 ✭✭✭


    In the process of moving into an office, where there is currently no phone line installed. There's going to be a minimum of 4 people in the office (looking to expand) and was thinking about doing the phone on every desk thing (extensions) but don't know where to start. Do you get a number of lines installed and plug them into a switching system and run the extensions from that? Or what? I'm completely clueless on this. Also, would this affect your ability to get broadband into the office?

    All help greatly appreciated.

    R


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    #2
    Stephen
    Registered Users Posts: 18,484 ✭✭✭✭Stephen


    What you're looking for is a PABX (on a small scale). You might want to get professional advice on this, these things can be very expensive. You'll need at least 1 regular phone line installed. Depending how busy your users are it may or may not be sufficient to have just one line. DSL should work fine on it once you have the microfilter splitting the line before it goes into the PABX. Higher-end PBX systems can be connected to E1 links for 32 simultaneous calls, but this would be very very expensive, and only really suitable for larger organisations.


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    #3
    jayok
    Registered Users Posts: 1,906 ✭✭✭jayok


    What you're better off doing here is getting in an ISDN line. This will give you two A channels or lines you can dial-in and out of. Also available is call hunting i.e. if line 1 is busy then it'll jump to line 2. Finally if you want a fax you can get a dedicated analog line and put DSL on this with a splitter.

    Feed the ISDN line into a small PABX and strap on the 4 phone extensions and you're done. These type of things are about €2k euro including installation. You could of course buy and install your own PABX you'll find these on the web but the cabling can be tough if there's no structured cabling in place.

    One final word of caution, Eircom line rental, ISDN is €29 / month and the analog is €12 / month. So it adds up before you start making calls.


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    #4
    steve-hosting36
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,161 ✭✭✭steve-hosting36


    Or you could look at a VOIP solution. Get some IP phones, a broadband connection to the net, and away you go :) There are several software/open source PBX products on the market that will give you all the functionlaity for not much money.


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    #5
    cgarvey
    Registered Users Posts: 3,886 ✭✭✭cgarvey


    jayok wrote:
    Feed the ISDN line into a small PABX and strap on the 4 phone extensions and you're done. These type of things are about €2k euro including installation.

    If you do go that route, eircom sell a small PBX called the Interlink (two models .. Interlink 1+4 and Interlink 2+8, which give you 1 or 2 phone lines connected to 4 or 8 extensions, respectively).. which gives basic PBX features (like call hold/forward, internal calls, day/night mode, group calls), but lacks some nice to haves like voice mailbox(es), caller ID pass through, or hold music.

    Another option is to use a Linux box running Asterisk (an open source software PBX with support for a limited set of phone port hardware). There is a guy on ILUG who'll be able to help you out there ... you should be able to get an 8 extension / 2 line PBX with voice mailboxes, hold music, "Press 1 for XYZ", and SIP/VoIP calling, all in for under a grand (excluding the cost of the handsets (which can be bog standard cheapo phones).

    .cg


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