You need to get some pricing from the local telco. Rates differ from area to area. Also, since you’re talking about a government entity, there may be some existing contracts that you can piggyback off of. Maybe your State has a pricing break that local governments are eligible for also.

I did the telephone work for a county government. It was Centrex based. A couple of the divisions had systems but they were still using the Centrex dial tone. The complaint that I heard for the couple of years that I did this was that the pure Centrex users, the one’s with 2500 sets, were not happy. They wanted the features that a system provided.

You’ve got to determine what your users want and need. You need to look at the costs of each solution. I will tell you that our county went from Centrex to a system.

Gary