Can Asterisk handle 500 beds hotel phone system?

We would like to deploy VOIP for a hotel with 500 beds. I have following questions. I would apprecite your insight if you can answer.

  1. what are the best solution for such deployment?
  2. can Asterisk handle it?
  3. We do not want replace all old analog phones in each room, is there any device or gateway exist for use so that we do not need to overhaul the entire phone system? i.e. do not want to replace all analog phones with a new IP phone for each room.

can Asterisk handle it? Yes

We do not want replace all old analog phones in each room

What kind of phones are they what is the current system?

We just don’t want to replace all analog phones with new IP phones to save $$$$. is there anything like ATA for main swtich board to convert VOIP to PSTN?

The reason I asked about the phones if they are proprietary to the current PBX then you are not going to use them with anythig else other then euipment made by that vendor. Kind of like trying to use Ford parts on a Chevy

you can put the * box infront of the existing pbx.

i am currently working on same implamentation( minus fact outbound callign onmy sip connection is givingme hell ).

however place ast box in front of you pbx so that it acts as the surrent pstn does not in relation to the current pbx.

basically you can get the long distance service cost advantages while running it with your legacy pbx. as phone die you replace them with VoIP phone( assuming you have ether running to the rooms )

room phone <–> legacy pbx <–> Asterisk <–> SIP/IAX termination

The important question that has not been answered is:

Are they analog phones? Or maybe Nortel?

Thanks for the reply. I love to know what are the solution we have to connect legacy PBX to Asterisk in this case?

We implement VOIP with the goal to take advantage of low long distance call cost from VOIP termination.

[quote=“Lithonite”]you can put the * box infront of the existing pbx.

i am currently working on same implamentation( minus fact outbound callign onmy sip connection is givingme hell ).

however place ast box in front of you pbx so that it acts as the surrent pstn does not in relation to the current pbx.

basically you can get the long distance service cost advantages while running it with your legacy pbx. as phone die you replace them with VoIP phone( assuming you have ether running to the rooms )

room phone <–> legacy pbx <–> Asterisk <–> SIP/IAX termination[/quote]

It depends on the current system that you have. Like some one said above, keep the current system in place. Instead of having the current system connect directly out to the telco have the curent pbx connect to asterisk and then asterisk to the PSTN. Connecting the curent PBX to asterisk all depends on what you have now. Also what kind of lines are you using now ? T1 ?

All of the concerns listed above are important to think about, I would also like to bring up a few more ideas. If you currently have analog phones that you would like to keep, you can do that if you select appropriate channel banks or IADs to interface them to your Asterisk Server. Also, does the Hotel have a property management system? What is theplan for handling guest voice mailboxes, Calling priveledges, house keeping codes…etc? I work for a company that has deployed Asterisk solutions in hotels. We have a middleware that works with your asterisk system to deliver these Hotel Features. Please email me with any questions. bnadalin@percipia.com

Yes that kind of equipment is either a Channel Bank or an Analog Gateway, if you are in China check the UT Starcom IAN-08, it is a 32 analog to SIP gateway, or an Audiocodes device.

Regards,

Roman

VoicePulse Connect for Asterisk (the ITSP) just came out with a feature that will price the outgoing call and send the cost to the asterisk box to make routing decisions based on cost… But in a hotel environment, I am thinking you could use the same mechanism to bill guests for the phone charges (based on cost + profit).

Does anyone know how to get the call cost (returned from VoicePulse) to log the value into CDR??? That would be cool…

Thanks a lot for you guy reply. Say if we just deploy ip phone in each room for outgoing calls only and we antipcipate 100 concurrent calls at the peak time, what hardware, server and bandwith (internet connect) do we need?