I’m an computer programmer, not a phone or super duper IT guy, so be gentle…
I have 100+ retail store locations and our legacy phone equipment has finally had it’s day. We are handed analog dial tone from our ISP (they call it a smart T1 and it gives use both data and phones from an Adtran unit). We simply take a Panasonic KX-TA824 phone system and 6 phone extensions and it just works. Costs about 800-1000 bucks per store to do this.
Can I do something without having to immediately contact our phone carrier. I just take 6 RJ-11 phone jacks plug them into as Asterisk compatible card, then the existing phone units (or cheap generic ones) into some other card and all is happy???
Looking for some recommendations also for equipment. I’d like no moving parts (SSD, etc) if possible.
Think I’m going to even get close to a cost of less than $1000 per complete unit? Hardware (would like a mount on the wall solution), FXO/FXS card, etc
I’m looking at these FXO/FXS cards and not sure I understand the difference. If the I have 6-POTS lines coming into the building, I need a 6 or 8 port FXO card. How does that work with the phone extensions. Another card?
So if you have your 6 POTS lines from your current phone provider you will need 6 FXO ports to connect them to.
Next to connect Analog phones to your PBX you will need one FXS port for each phone.
They don’t all have to be on the same card, You can buy multiple cards and mix and match ports as needed.
There are also stand alone gateways you can buy that will give you a SIP endpoint you can send and recieve calls to like a Cisco SPA8000 that would give you 8 FXS ports to plug your analog phones into.
Or a Cisco SPA8800 that would give you 4 FXO and 4 FXS ports.
Your biggest cost is going to be the FXO & FXS ports, For such a small system you can run asterisk on just about any PC.