PBX phone system help

[Justin1201]

I'm having something of an emergency here. Up front - I know nothing about phone systems. I advised a small business I support to switch to Comcast from Centurylink because they had terrible bandwidth and DSL. I was unaware that Comcast does not provide PBX services.

Long story short, Comcast shows up, disconnects their Centurylink service, and leaves them with no PBX and six analog (POTS) connections that are now connected directly to their phones. Customer needs "ring down" and "transfer" ability.

I'm assuming there is some simple PBX box for this but hours of searching on newegg, amazon, and google have turned up nothing but VOIP stuff and $3000 boxes that don't look anything like what I need.

Customer now has 6 analog phone lines and 6 analog phones. Any advice on how I can accomplish this?!?! I'm in over my head here. They could probably live with just 4 incoming lines or even two, customers just call the one number. HEEEELP!

Also, how the @#$@# does Comcast claim to be a business phone service provider and not provide these basic things??! Blows my mind.

 

[trevm999]

Comcast and Centurylink are foreign to me, so I'm going to have to get you to clarify some things. Centurylink provided them a PBX service or was there a PBX on site that was managed by them? Who is their phone service provider now?

Asterisk (and therefore I assume solutions based on Asterisk) can use analog lines, you just need analog cards in your server.

 

[Justin1201]

Centurylink was providing PBX style services but their equipment will be leaving. Comcast is providing phone service now but no advanced features just 6 straight up analog lines.

Is there no box that can take a few incoming analog lines and do the routing? I'd rather not build them a whole server just for this.

 

[seedubya]

Don't know if you get them Stateside but Panasonic do simple analogue PBXs like the KX-TEA308

 

[Justin1201]

Awesome - can't find that one locally but i found this: http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-KX-...&qid=1463275332&sr=8-1&keywords=panasonic+pbx

Looks very similar. Do you think that will do the job? Thanks for the help!

 

[rsarceno]

Justin,

I provide hosted PBX. For more info check http://voipaccess.net
PM me if interested

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

I would imagine he meant KX-TA308 (without the E).

 

[fencepost]

On the Analog side I don't like that those Panasonics only have 3 lines and aren't expandable. What kind of physical phones do they have, or are those going away as well? If Centurylink provided the phones as part of the service they may want them back.

If the phones are going as well, then you might as well switch over to an internal VOIP system - or an outside one depending on the contract with Comcast. If the system's being replaced entirely you might see if you can drop to 1-2 analog lines from Comcast (for faxes) and port everything else to VOIP either internal or external.

For small internal PBXes with the ability to take 6 analog inputs, I know Grandstream has some appliance PBXes that include a bunch of analog ports. I have a UCM6108 on my desk that I'm supposed to be configuring as a possible replacement for an Elastix box, but haven't done anything with it yet.

http://www.grandstream.com/products/ip-pbxs/ucm-series-ip-pbxs/product/ucm6100-series

I'm going to say you'd probably want the UCM6108 (8 analog FXO ports for PSTN connections).

 

[TAPtech]

How many concurrent OUTSIDE phone calls do they need?

 

[seedubya]

Awesome - can't find that one locally but i found this: http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-KX-...&qid=1463275332&sr=8-1&keywords=panasonic+pbx

Looks very similar. Do you think that will do the job? Thanks for the help!

That listing is incorrect. It's mentioning 2 different models, the 308 (3 Lines 8 Extensions) and the 824 (8 Lines 24 Extensions). Look, only your client can make a decision about how many lines they NEED and (no offence meant) you're currently not equipped to properly advise him or her. I'd suggest finding a reputable PBX company locally and working with them to get this resolved. Chalk this up to experience and learn from it because, next time, you might not have such an understanding customer. If you were my IT guy I'd be finding it very hard to trust your judgement right about now.

EDIT: Just be be clear - I've fscked up at least this big before on a job. It's how you learn when you're in a one man band.

 

[fencepost]

In some ways I have to echo @seedubya , because it sounds like right now the customer is effectively down. If you can find someone locally who has appropriate equipment on-hand and can get them up immediately that may be your best bet - anything you have to order, receive, and learn enough to configure when completely unfamiliar with it (or with analog PBXs in general) is going to take a lot longer and be a lot more painful.