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["Matt Pusateri" <mpusateri AT wickedtrails.com>]

On Tue, April 19, 2005 7:42 am, Jim Ray said:
> Who is the most reputable phone system company in town that can handle
> what I call large jobs?  I have a client that needs 9 phone lines and
> 43
> extensions.  The system I carry only goes up to 8 lines and 32
> extensions.
>
> They currently have a Nortel Meridian and just had their voice mail go
> down at the plant.  Not only are they nice people, they always pay.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jim

Jim,

When I was reviewing phone system vendors when my company was looking,
I was most impressed by Metro Telecom 876-5840.  We didn't end up
buying a phone system because we were able to upgrade our system for
$2500.00.  A whole lot cheaper than a forklift upgrade of a phone
system.  Any how of all the Metro Telecom had the most follow through
and took the time to listen to what I was looking for.  That being
said I since have explored more Voip options and don't know if I could
reccomend their Inter-Tel systems if the company thinks they will ever
go to voip in the future.  Inter-Tel locks you in to a proprietary
viop solution.

All that being said, what about voip?  Will their existing network
handle voip traffic?  If so look at FeatureTel for hosted Voip.  My
brother and I just put an Asterisk Open Source Voip PBX at our church.
 The cost of regular pbx phones versus voip phones is almost
negligable.  So the big cost ends up being the phone switch.  I'm
thinking of putting Asterisk in at the company I work for, as soon as
they decide they have the money.  I priced out a full voip solution
for our company at around $20K.  The closest non-voip solution I
priced a couple of years ago was $35K-$40K.  And a Cicso Voip solution
was $80K-100K.  Where talking for about 40 phones.

Matt Pusateri