How old is a NEC 28i Phone System?

At the small business I work for they have a NEC 28i Phone system, which has been her for many years. I think it was installed in 2005, but I'm not positive.

Anyways, we have very few problems with it, but I am worried due to its age that it may suddenly fail. Anyone have any experience with these systems?

The big question is, is it time to spend some capital on a new phone system? Obviously the longer we can continue using this phone system the better, but at some point the line has to be drawn. I just can't figure out where that line is on my own.

Do you guys have the access to program the system, or do you have a service contract with a local vendor/support company (quite common)?

My experience with NEC systems is that they are islands unto themselves, where only actual service technicians ever get to futz with them, very closed off. Usually if something fails, the answer is to replace the power supply or to replace the cabinet. Older ones also don't really seem to be designed to tie in with any data resources, though I think their newer stuff does.

How many extensions on the NEC system, handsets, and physical phone lines coming into it? Start gathering all that type of information on your phone system, and how you have ring groups, hunt groups etc set up. Stuff that you'd want to know if you get into a VOIP conversation with a vendor that sells Cisco or Avaya. Also there's some really good stuff out there based on open source, like Barracuda's CudaTel stuff, and things built around asterisk (suitable for small business and home especially - I have a trixbox setup at home thats incredibly flexible.)

Other useful stuff you might want to get: how much you spend per month on phone service, actual circuit usage (erlangs), if all places that have phones are already wired or could be wired for CAT5e/6 (NEC runs can be very long - like iirc 1000-3000 feet, so in some locations, a single closet can serve a full building where the ethernet network is spread across a few closets - so in those cases, account for additional wiring demands if phone locations don't already have ethernet drops) . And also you'd want to do it right and get POE switches and use voice VLAN stuff with QoS to ensure call quality is reliable and to add a layer of protection to the provisioning server.

It's pretty in-depth stuff, but a vendor will be able to help with a lot of that, and VOIP even with infrastructure upgrade costs, can pay for itself over 3-6 years depending on the situation.

Oh nice. that was my 64th post, and I'm no longer a n00bie. Sweet.

Thanks for the prompt reply. You brought up some interesting topics that I had not even thought of.

I'll give you a little more background as to what sparked this inquiry. My boss was late on a phone bill and our service got cut. I guess my boss was expecting a phone call rather than just a written notice before they did that. Either way now she has a grudge with our current telco provider, Earthlink business, previously One Communications.

I have inquired with our IT company and Megapath for quotes on switching providers, but this would make a great time to upgrade our phone system too.

It seems any way we slice it all the quotes thus far are going to raise our monthly bill. This is due in part because where we are located there is no cable service (wires are under the ground). So we are basically stuck with analog phone lines and overpriced slow dsl, or expensive T1 service.

Ill post some more info about our phone system when I have access to a computer.

Sent you a PM last week-

damacus said:

Do you guys have the access to program the system, or do you have a service contract with a local vendor/support company (quite common)?

Click to expand...

The only thing I program on the system are speed dials and the time when daylight savings time kicks in. I do that via a phone and some funky button combinations. We do not have a service contract, however, I do know the name of the company that installed the system. They attempted to get us to sign a contract in April 2004! so my best guess is the system dates back to around then.

damacus said:

My experience with NEC systems is that they are islands unto themselves, where only actual service technicians ever get to futz with them, very closed off. Usually if something fails, the answer is to replace the power supply or to replace the cabinet. Older ones also don't really seem to be designed to tie in with any data resources, though I think their newer stuff does.

Click to expand...

Yea there seems to be very little I can do with this other than program speed dials and such. Interestingly we used to have two stores, but one of them closed so we have lots of spare phones and another system unit that appears to be identical. All sitting in storage.

damacus said:

How many extensions on the NEC system, handsets, and physical phone lines coming into it? Start gathering all that type of information on your phone system, and how you have ring groups, hunt groups etc set up. Stuff that you'd want to know if you get into a VOIP conversation with a vendor that sells Cisco or Avaya. Also there's some really good stuff out there based on open source, like Barracuda's CudaTel stuff, and things built around asterisk (suitable for small business and home especially - I have a trixbox setup at home thats incredibly flexible.)

Click to expand...

I have some spreadsheets that our original system installer provided, however they don't seem to be 100% accurate. Example: We have 5 phone numbers you can call, but I only see 4 listed on the spreadsheet.

I don't have all the information I need that's for sure. I had a vendor ask me if our system used SIP or PRI and I couldn't give him an answer.

As a whole the people I work with don't really use this phone system to its potential. At most they all understand how to place a call on hold and transfer that call to someone else. But they don't know how to do it when the person they want to transfer to is on another line. Basically what I'm trying to say is, we don't need a fancy phone system, and it needs to be stupidly easy to use.

damacus said:

Other useful stuff you might want to get: how much you spend per month on phone service, actual circuit usage (erlangs), if all places that have phones are already wired or could be wired for CAT5e/6 (NEC runs can be very long - like iirc 1000-3000 feet, so in some locations, a single closet can serve a full building where the ethernet network is spread across a few closets - so in those cases, account for additional wiring demands if phone locations don't already have ethernet drops) . And also you'd want to do it right and get POE switches and use voice VLAN stuff with QoS to ensure call quality is reliable and to add a layer of protection to the provisioning server.

Click to expand...

We spend roughly $490/mo for 5 phone lines 2 fax lines and a 512K SDSL line that has high packet loss. That includes roughly 1300 minutes of long distance (within the U.S.) and about 500 minutes locally every month.
Only about 5 of the 7 phones have cat5e nearby that they could use. Others would need to be snaked up from the basement, which will probably be a pain in the ass. On the bright side, at most I would say the farthest run of cat5e is about 50 ft or less. Currently there are two unmanaged network switches one in the basement and one upstairs that serve the whole place.

damacus said:

It's pretty in-depth stuff, but a vendor will be able to help with a lot of that, and VOIP even with infrastructure upgrade costs, can pay for itself over 3-6 years depending on the situation.

Click to expand...

Definitely not my area of expertise. My boss simply wants to ditch her current telco provider because she's pissed at them. I honestly don't think she's going to be able to do that without her monthly bill going up. Seem's like our pricing is very good. Any upgrades we make such as switching to T1 service, while it will bring better service, will ultimately cost more per month.

I've got contacts for phone system support all across the US. There are people who can help you for sure.

Quoting out of order.. meant to reply sooner but last week was a long week. Wanted to give you a reasonable response.

nowwhatnapster said:

I don't have all the information I need that's for sure. I had a vendor ask me if our system used SIP or PRI and I couldn't give him an answer.

Click to expand...

SIP would be receiving VOIP service over the internet. The remaining question is whether your telco ran you a T1 (generally a box with a card in it with a single outside line running in, that feeds a punch-down) or if the telco just ran a few copper pairs to you guys (a line split out without the box.) Which type do you have?

nowwhatnapster said:

I have some spreadsheets that our original system installer provided, however they don't seem to be 100% accurate. Example: We have 5 phone numbers you can call, but I only see 4 listed on the spreadsheet.

Click to expand...

Also you do need to differentiate between circuits and lines. You can have a single phone line and have the telco run several numbers (DIDs) down that line. Can be important to know for call routing.

nowwhatnapster said:

We spend roughly $490/mo for 5 phone lines 2 fax lines and a 512K SDSL line that has high packet loss. That includes roughly 1300 minutes of long distance (within the U.S.) and about 500 minutes locally every month.

My boss simply wants to ditch her current telco provider because she's pissed at them. I honestly don't think she's going to be able to do that without her monthly bill going up. Seem's like our pricing is very good. Any upgrades we make such as switching to T1 service, while it will bring better service, will ultimately cost more per month.

Click to expand...

Do know that changing you will incur expenses. A T1 might wind up costing you less than you think per month, though, and may be a better fit. For example, you could bring in a fractional T1 with 5 DS0's for telephone, and 8 DS0's for equivalent of 512Kbps service (or heck double it for a megabit.) Internet over T1 should be clean; fairly low latency and consistent. Other cost saving measures could be porting 2 FAX numbers over to an eFAX/vFAX fax-to-email service like vitelty, ($18 one-time to port, $3/mo vFAX, but shop around.)

Unless you can get business class cable, and are willing to put your eggs in one basket using pure VOIP, you're going to deal with the Telco. You could find out what CLECs are around in your area and go through them, but yeah, you probably do want to stick with telco circuits; they're very reliable, not dependant on your internet, not affected by packet loss / jitter / latency of your DSL, not dependant on QoS being adhered to, etc.

If you had reliable internet, ideally with QoS (your current DSL with packet loss would likely not suffice), you could also have a VOIP account online and route your long distance calls over it rather than pay the generally more expensive traditional toll carriers. (With VOIP you can set the outbound caller ID to one of your regular land lines, so the person receiving the call will still phone you back at your primary number.) Again, Vitelity as an example, $1.49/mo for a line, and 1.44c/min outgoing nationwide. I use them as an example because they're a good discount carrier and I've had no problems. Others recommend things like BroadVoice, Level3, etc. Plenty of SIP trunking services - this is where the true competition in phone service occurs. Easy to switch providers or have accounts with several as backups.

You could either tie that stuff into your current PBX, or do fun stuff with a new phone system. If you got a new system of course you'd need to know what kind of circuits you're dealing with to get the right hardware.

nowwhatnapster said:

The only thing I program on the system are speed dials and the time when daylight savings time kicks in. I do that via a phone and some funky button combinations. We do not have a service contract, however, I do know the name of the company that installed the system. They attempted to get us to sign a contract in April 2004! so my best guess is the system dates back to around then.
..
As a whole the people I work with don't really use this phone system to its potential. At most they all understand how to place a call on hold and transfer that call to someone else. But they don't know how to do it when the person they want to transfer to is on another line. Basically what I'm trying to say is, we don't need a fancy phone system, and it needs to be stupidly easy to use.

Click to expand...

Simple requirements / use cases definitely make things easier. Some of the programming I was talking about was like configuring what extensions ring when calls come in on whichever lines, call routing, IVRs, time schedules, etc.

I think you'd probably be able to scoot by using something like a trixbox server (asterisk with a FreePBX GUI), PBX-in-a-Flash (another asterisk/FPBX distro), or a Barracuda Cudatel system (basically FreeSwitch with a really slick GUI - a lot of freeswitch devs work for barracuda now it seems.)

For handsets you'd want to use ideally some Polycoms because their HDvoice sounds incredible and their hardware is good stuff, but also Aastra makes good phones and Grandstream has some stuff that can work on a budget.

Hope this helps.

Check with your vendor. You could look at Telepacific/PAETEC/Verizon depending where you live and who you want to work with. Them, along with all the other data/minutes providers will offer a flex T1 service. They bring you two ports, an ethernet port and a PRI (phone talk for what your T1 delivers to your phones). You plug your data router into the ethernet port, 1.5mbps. Then you plug your PBX into the PRI port. Now you've got up to 23 channels to choose from.

Each call takes away a little bit of bandwidth (~64kbps per call). Now for a small fee each month (Apprx 400-700) you have faster internet and PRI service for call trunking.

If you got questions, keep 'em coming.

How interested in switching to a new PBX are you? One thing to keep in mind, whether you stay NEC, go Toshiba/Avaya (Includes Nortel now)/Cisco/etc, the PBX will only be as good as the installer.

randyc said:

Check with your vendor. You could look at Telepacific/PAETEC/Verizon depending where you live and who you want to work with. Them, along with all the other data/minutes providers will offer a flex T1 service. They bring you two ports, an ethernet port and a PRI (phone talk for what your T1 delivers to your phones). You plug your data router into the ethernet port, 1.5mbps. Then you plug your PBX into the PRI port. Now you've got up to 23 channels to choose from.

Each call takes away a little bit of bandwidth (~64kbps per call). Now for a small fee each month (Apprx 400-700) you have faster internet and PRI service for call trunking.

Click to expand...

Wow, that's really cool. I hadn't heard about a flex T1, just about having x DS0s for data and x DS0s for voice. Being able to use those for bandwidth when the lines are free is pretty cool. Most of my T1 experience has been full data or (more common) full voice.

Also in my experience, the T1 cost is about $400 for a full T1, plus a few charges and whatnot, so 400-700 is what I'd expect also. Like I said in my previous post, nowwhat, you'll probably be surprised that for around what you pay now, you can get better service, just transition costs. And if you can get a deal on fractional T1 service, you'll be able to save cost by scaling how many DS0s you need.

I've also seen where they drop an Adtran IAD off a T1. Ethernet port for data, 25 pair amphenol for phone, the phone system just sees POTS lines.

I really prefer feeding the PRI to the phone system. Keeps things simple! But yeah, the analog route does the trick, especially if you're mating upgraded comms to an older box.

Last year we were facing the same problem at work, except it was a Toshiba system that was purchased in 1999.

We took a year to go over our options and it was decided that 1) we never wanted to own a phone system again, and 2) voip would be cheaper than what we were currently paying.

We then used a broker who happened to formerly work at one of the companies that was in the final running. Having a broker helped us a lot.

We have a dedicated T1 for the voip that goes back to the company where the service is hosted from. We have Cisco from top to bottom for the voip.

Because I was smart enough when I had our office wired and used Cat 5e with the rj45 connectors for both phone and network we kept the voip network completely separate from the data network.

We were up in the air with as to which company of two we were going to go with. We scheduled meetings with our broker to go meet with both companies and see the differences one last time in person. During these meetings one company was a lot more professional (hint it was not the one the broker used to work for; I think they saw it is an easy sell and just wanted to goof off with their former co-worker.

When calling for references it is not if the other company had problems during the transition it is what the new voip provider did to solve the problems and how quickly they solved the problems. We called references and one reference flat out said yes we had problems during the transition but ___ (the voip company) had an on-site team and a team back in the office waiting for problems to be able to fix them quickly. That is what made up our mind with who we were going to use.

The day of our switch over the arrived at 4:00 and by 4:30 they started switching everything over. Tearing out the old handsets and cutting over the existing T1. There were a few minor problems that the quickly worked through (entering account codes when dialing long distance was one of them). But by 7:00 we had working phones. The next morning the voip company was back onsite in case there were any more problems when the users started using the phones, which a few odd problems popped up (damn twin cities and 4 local area codes).

As for setup fees and up front costs the only thing we had was a credit on the first bill to offset the setup costs, and we also had a bill for the phones since we decided to purchase the handsets rather than rent them. The cisco switches in our wiring closet we could have bought but the rental cost is so low I decided not to be responsible for them so those are rented.

We were also already used to paying for a T1 because of the direct dial numbers on the old phone system. We also kept one pots because of the fax line.

I would say what broker and voip provider we went with but they are both local to the midwest and would not do a lot of good to you out on the east coast.

Interesting you went that route, as Toshiba systems can easily be upgraded with new processors and cards.

jeffmoss26 said:

Interesting you went that route, as Toshiba systems can easily be upgraded with new processors and cards.

Click to expand...

We had no service contract on the phone system for the last two years of its life. We had cards going bad that they would shuffle around. Most of the handsets were as old as 1999 or older from the previous phone system. VOIP was cheaper per month. And most importantly we decided we never wanted to own a phone system again. With only 18 employees going hosted was a no brainer.

That makes sense-for a small environment, as long as the hosted stuff serves your needs, they seem alright.

JM

Just to give you all an update. After talking to a variety of telecom companies we decided "Paetec" had the best offer. My boss is very hesitant though and I'll explain why.

Paetec is offering a dynamic T1 1.5MB with an Allworx IP phone system. 8 hand sets, service contract, installation/wiring for $640/mo plus average usage brings us to about 675/mo. and a $700 setup fee.

I think it sounds like a great deal over our existing service which is about 380 + usage brings it to about 475/mo. Should also factor in an additional $60/mo for our backup ISP so 535/mo. And our existing phone system does not have a service contract.

Difference of $140/mo and what do we get? New phone system with support contract. Business grade internet that is 3x faster. Lower rate per minute on phone calls.

The only thing my boss is seeing is increase of $140/mo and 5 year contract. So its a no go until I can convince him otherwise.

One point that was brought up was the cost of the actual phone system itself if it were bought outright is something like $11 grand. That seems a little high to me. Anyone know if that is a legit number or is it grossly marked up.

IIRC, Paetec owns Allworx so that is what they try and push.