Telecom Centrex help

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CYaBro

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#67683 6-Sep-2010 21:18

Hey, can someone please explain to me how Telecom's Centrex service works?

I have been asked to do some rewiring for a friends building and they are using Telecom's Centrex service.
I could not see any type of phone system or switching equipment in the building.
I did find the ETP and as far as I could see there are 4 lines coming in to the building, 2 of the white 4 core cables.
They have 4 numbers at the moment, a fax line, a main number and I guess the other two are steppers.
They also have what looks like a Telecom Private Office broadband connection but not sure about that and not sure what line it is on.

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sbiddle

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#377277 6-Sep-2010 21:20

Centrex is a hosted solution. There is no additional hardware required, just regular analogue or ISDN phones.

CYaBro

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#377297 6-Sep-2010 22:17

So each phone/extension has its own incoming line from the ETP?
How can I tell if they are ISDN lines?

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matt45

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#377410 7-Sep-2010 09:47

Centrex lines are physically identical to a standard pots line, ISDN is digital so you can't get dialtone with a normal phone plugged in and it requires a NT unit (if there is no hardware at all then they do not have ISDN).

raytaylor

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#378009 8-Sep-2010 20:49

Yea so to be clear,

Centrex lines are individual standard analog lines coming from the telephone exchange.

Except
All the pabx features on the line, are done at the telephone exchange.

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pauln

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#378084 9-Sep-2010 01:31

so there's a couple of versions, Centrex (Central Exchange) over POTS, over BRI and over PRI. I'd guess you've got Centrex over POTS - by far the most common. You can check out the user guide at http://www.telecom.co.nz/centrex bear in mind, depending on how long they've had the service and whether it's hunting or regular (you can set up pseudo hunting on regular via the multiple call diversion functionality) there maybe some variations with the user guide. One key feature of Centrex is that any line set up in the same Basic Business Group (BBG) could extension dial any other line in the same BBG without incurring a call charge. Multiple lines within the same exchange area could all be set up in the same BBG
Re the Private Office connection, this is a WAN connection and generally would not be run on a working phone line. Been a while on some of the voice stuff, happy to be corrected

CYaBro

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#390306 11-Oct-2010 00:16

Just remembered to update this thread!

Thanks for all the info people, we got it sorted in the end.
The main reason I was a bit confused to start with was that I could only see 4 lines coming in to the building at the Telecom demark box. After closer inspection of the cabling I found 4 more lines coming in to another demark point, in the bathroom of all places, and they were the centrex lines. The first 4 I found were for the alarm, fax and Telecom private office connection and one was unused.

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