Philips Micronet SBX-8 PABX advice needed

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abd

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Topic # 146758 28-May-2014 14:36

Apologies if this is in the wrong forum - I am new here and the choice of forum for this subject wasn't obvious to me.

The telephone system at my house in Wellington consists of one POTS telecom line connected to a Philips Micronet SBX-8 PABX. The switchboard was installed in 1985 and is still doing its job today, although each time a part of it dies, it's increasingly difficult to find spare parts and somebody to do the repair.

We like the functionality of having 8 extension numbers in the house, but it's not a 'must have'.

Now looking to ditch the Telecom line and get telephone service thrown in with a Vodafone UFB cable connection. Will it be possible to connect this phone service to the switchboard so the existing extensions can continue to be used with Vodafone? Or is there a better solution?

I should explain the current 8 extensions are spread over three different floors in the house and on the upper two levels (covering 5 extensions) the cabling is probably original i.e. 1985. On the bottom level (where the switchboard is) there is a separate, much newer wired cat 5 network handling both data and phone, to which the other 3 phone extensions are connected.

Ideally I'm looking for a solution which enables me to retain the existing switchboard without having to run new cable up two floors. That said, I'm also open to the possibility of ditching the SBX owing to its age, without wanting to lose its functionality.

Any advice gratefully received - thanks!

Andrew

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Reply # 1055138 28-May-2014 15:21

The Vodafone residential VoIP service, from what I have seen, is only ever delivered on their gateways via the ATA port. This means it just spits out an analogue line. This line could be wired back in to the PABX and things will continue as normal. Very very surprised it is still running!! To replace it with a new PABX, with 8 SLT extensions and 1 PSTN trunk, is going to cost around a minimum of about $1000 - so if the old one is still working stick with it I guess.

If you want a bit more overall flexibily the Yealink W52P IP DECT phones are pretty excellent. They will terminate SIP directly on it (Vodafone voice won't be an option but 2Talk would be) and can be configured to ring as you please. Probably more features than the old PABX but again, to get 5 phones (max per base) will cost around the $800 mark.

richms

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Reply # 1055196 28-May-2014 15:50

See if you can find a place upgrading from a panasonic hybrid system. 2 friends have deployed them at their flat with minimal problems and the digital phones work fine on crappy old cabling.

Richard rich.ms

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Reply # 1055449 28-May-2014 20:51

^^ Good point.

If the SBX is on it's way out an old Panasonic would be a good choice. This one would be good as gold. Just remember that the digital phones are 4 wire (2-pair). You need a digital phone to do programming too. That was says it can do AA which is great because it means the Voicemail/AA card is installed. You can still buy new digital phones and there are lots of cards out there if anything goes faulty.

Again, you can plug the Vodafone ATA in to the trunk ports on the Panasonic.

sbiddle

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Reply # 1055453 28-May-2014 20:59

ATA ports don't always work well on a PBX as they may not detect a disconnect without being configured correctly.

abd

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Reply # 1056112 29-May-2014 17:36

And let me guess - the bloke who does the install won't be a world authority on setting disconnect tones...

Thanks everyone for your contributions - I have some thinking to do.

richms

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Reply # 1056124 29-May-2014 18:03

All I had to do to get disconnect working on a silly little pabx was turn on polarity reversal. It was a from the usa not telepermited pabx tho.

Richard rich.ms

michaelt

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Reply # 1056126 29-May-2014 18:15

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It'll be a bit of messing around, but if you want a cheap solution using consumer parts you can try setting up Asterisk on a DD-WRT router (or OpenWRT or Tomato, or even a PC) to act as a SIP PBX. Then get some cheap SIP ATA's to connect to Asterisk. I'd say 3 dual-extension ones right next to it, with the extensions connected to your 5 old lines and either the same for the 3 data/voice lines or just put an ATA at the end of a data cable.

It'll be a bit of work to set up, but should be stable and flexible once it's running.

One advantage (if Vodafone's VoIP service supports it) is that you can make multiple concurrent calls. I can use at least 2 extensions at the same time on my iTalk line. You could also install a SIP app on smartphones and (with the right routing configuration) patch into your home PBX from anywhere you have data, make/receive calls from your home number when away, etc.

EDIT: Or you can just get cheap used IP phones instead of dealing with ATA's. Can usually find lots of ~20 of the things on trademe for not much.

raytaylor

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Reply # 1056149 29-May-2014 18:43

If i remember right, the SBX-8 and 12 (we had a 12 before the early model aria) had less internal smarts than the SBX-6

The vodafone voip system that is delivered using their huawei devices are unable to emulate an NZ telephone line and so the PBX thinks that when the phone rings, a call comes in, then the interval between rings is too long and so it thinks the incoming caller has hung up, then when a new call comes in, it thinks its a new call and basically buggers up your incoming call routing plan.

Anywhoo the vodafone system for that reason is not considered compatible with PBX systems - even when using their huawei modem/ata with a modern PBX. I currently have a customer who has an issue because they were sold the package with the 1x pots line and 2x voip lines (easy office?) and the panasonic PBX cant handle the incoming calls. The receptionists have trained themselves to know you have to pick up on a ring and not off a ring to get the call, otherwise it hangs up on the caller. You cannot program this stuff in the modem interface.

But you will probably have more success with the SBX-8 as i think it passes the ring signal directly through to the extension rather than regenerating it.

If you can use your own ATA (i have not asked vodafone) then pretty much any cisco can be programmed to correctly emulate an NZ telephone line with the correct ring tones, dial tones, impedance, polarity reversal etc.

Edit: by regenerating I mean that most systems will see incoming call, and start generating their own ring tone to the extensions that are programmed as step 1. The SBX-8 I am 99% sure will just pass a ring on/off through to the extensions as step 1 - so whatever ring pattern comes in the trunk will also get passed to the extensions like if it was a single, normal double, or triple ring. Where as modern systems have their own extension ringing sound which may still be a double, but the lengths of each ring may be different as well as the pauses.

Ray Taylor
Taylor Broadband (rural hawkes bay)
www.ruralkiwi.com

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chevrolux

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Reply # 1056187 29-May-2014 19:46

Yea it just needs to do a reversal.

I have only one customer on Vodafone VoIP running through a PABX and they have zero problems with locking up trunks. In fairness though this is on a later model Samsung PABX. However the PABX isn't doing anything clever, it is simply treating them as normal PSTN trunks.

But then I have also a handful running older Panasonic's and Aria's with ATA's in front of them. Again, in fairness, these are SPA112's connecting to 2Talk. But it is just the reversal it needs to do. I would have thought the Huawei gateways would have the ability to do this, it's a super standard feature.

raytaylor

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Reply # 1056215 29-May-2014 20:27

Im not talking about polarity reversal - its the ringing cadence that is the biggest problem i have found.
The ringing doesnt match a standard single or double ring so on many modern pbx's it doesnt trigger the system to acknowledge an incoming call.

So call comes in
Ring ring.....pause....ring ring

A normal pbx will send a ring signal to the extensions, when the extension picks up, it connects the trunk to the extension.

With the vodafone its coming in as
Ring ring.....pause....more pause....ring ring

So the pbx will send a ring signal to the extensions, but then the second ring doesnt come in on the trunk in time, so the pbx cancels the incoming call.
When the extension picks up, they get an internal dial tone.
But then at that same time, the second ring comes in and the extension sees that ext1 is busy, so it routes the incoming call to ext2 and starts ringing on extn 2
But the 3rd ring ring doesnt come in on time, so if extn 2 picks up, they too get a dial tone.
By now, ext1 has hung up again so when the 3rd ring ring does come in, the new incoming call gets routed back to the primary destination ext1.
Ext1 rings once, but the 4th ring ring doesnt come in on time and so when they pick up, they get a dial tone.

Really annoying for receptionists. Probably just a provisioning issue on vodafones end - then again some ata's arent capable of being programmed to match certain ring patterns - they just have their own hard coded.

So no problem with trunks locking up - its the fact that its really hard to "catch" an incoming call when the PBX is aware of its presence.

Ray Taylor
Taylor Broadband (rural hawkes bay)
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michaelt

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Reply # 1057269 31-May-2014 22:27

I was very tempted to go for this auction myself, but I really don't need 8 FXS ports. This could do what you're looking for - http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=734259580 . Seems to have some very basic switchboard functionality built-in, but you could probably extend that by running an Asterisk server as well.