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From: davep@u.washington.edu (David Ptasnik)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Small Telephone Switches
Message-ID: <8883@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 11 Jun 90 17:09:47 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 428, Message 10 of 11


In article 6632 of comp.dcom.telecom, hardarso@weiss.cs.unc.
edu (Kari Hardarson) writes:

>Has anyone seen a telephone switch which has the following features:
>Cheap... < 5000$ (Why not? That should be possible...)
>Hands-off-operation: speakers built into the handsets
>Do-not-disturb: The Kanda switch required removing a link from the board..
>Not too many wires in the connections to the phones. Also: standard
>type sockets: ours has three twisted pairs, star configuration.

>Call-Forwarding, to an employee's home if neccessary
>Makes the bell ring, first at the secretary's, then in preprogrammed
>locations one after another: Ours rings everywhere unless DND is on, and
>if it is the call cannot be forwarded there once someone else has answered.
>Conference calls. Ours can make 2 to 1, 1 to 2.

Almost any good phone system can do the above, Northern Telecom,
Toshiba, Inter-Tel (Premier), and Iwatsu (Omega) can all handle these
needs.  The AT&T Merlin doesn't do the call forwarding, and would
really require re-wiring.

>Expandable for voice-mail

There are several ways to access voice mail.  The best way requires
that you be able to have single line telephones on the system.  This
generally takes extra cards, a ring generator and a touch tone
reciever.

Check with your dealer about cost at time of purchase, and after the
system has been installed.  These prices are usually different.  They
charge you more later, because they can.

>Allows RS-232 connections and/or Ethernet connections to be integrated,
>so that cables don't have to be run separately. I don't really know what
>I'm asking for here.. ;->

It is possible to integrate voice and data on the same cables.
Genreally it is consuidered too expensive and/or slow to do through a
telephone system.  If you are really interested in this you probably
need to look at a PBX rather than Key System.  This will almost
certainly exceed your price limit.  One possible exception is the
Tadiran family of products.  It starts with a small digital key
system, and using the same boards and phones can be expanded to a
multi-thousand station ISDN compatible PBX.

>Programmable from terminals, i.e. soft-configurable.
>I want to be able to say, for example: CALL JOHN. This would run a 
>batch job that told the switch to make a call, and ring my phone when 
>the connection is made. If I move, I don't want to open the switch 
>and mess around with circuit boards.

>Expandable to ISDN when the time comes? How does X.25 fit into this 
>picture? 

Once again the Tadiran switches do these things.  They are
particularly terminal/network friendly.  For example, if your
receptionist takes a message, she can activate a light on your phone,
or place the full text directly into an internal E-mail.  Her PC
Console also tells her when people are in or out, and lets them leave
special messages for specific incoming callers.  They also database
phone numbers for outgoing calls and autodialing.  The whole thing is
done on two pair wiring.

>PS: I am working in Iceland, our phone system confirms to CCITT
>standards, so BELL systems may not work there, I wouldn't know.

Tadiran is an Israeli company, with an significant Euorpean market, so
should conform to all standards.