sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Mitel Telephones & Systems LS/GS hybrid mode?

Yes, well I thought of that too, but we have no assistance for Mitel programming or hw changes.
Our telco has no interest in helping us give them less money.
Also, paying them to come setup and configure that setup would have cost enough the the VoIP would have taken a good long time to recover the cost.
We are really only looking at this as a intermediate step anyway as eventually we will replace the Mitel entirely with Asterisk and IP phones so there's no point in buying any hardware or programming that we won't be keeping.
Given we have no real digital service options here and will be on analogue CO lines for the foreseeable future, this setup made the most sense to me.

T1-DEA service here is $2500 a month with a $2600 setup fee. It's just not worth replacing our current B1 analogue lines with this given our call load. Especially since VoIP will reduce our actually outside line usage dramatically.

I wish there had been a simple solution to this. If all PBX's (or better yet, telco interfaces too)had an Ethernet port and supported a web setup interface and g.729 it would be a wonderful world....

Just remember that back in the mid-90's, when your ML processor came out, it was the greatest thing in the world!!!
All of us phone 'veterans' will assume that since the Mitel pbx has been running solidly over the the years, it was never considered for upgrade or replacement (to the newer versions that do have ethernet/web support). Wish my PC from the mid 90's ran that long!!

If you want to have ethernet access to mitel pbx
200 digatal el etc. put a ipocket on the maint port use local ip address for in house or pulbic
ip for www access. then telnet into the system.

You might consider asking for an on-sight tech further down in the appropriate thread, or check for nearby techs up at the top of the page. They don't care one way or the other if your local telco loses revenue. John C.

Lightninghorse, Check my location. Unfortunately, no local independent techs. They all work for the local telco. My guess is that the nearest independent is 11 hours south in Edmonton.
There's essentially a telco monopoly here in the NT. It causes things like high prices and failure to be customer driven in their solutions and offerings.

fifty5footer:
I have no complaints about the Mitel. It's been a good system, and everything I've read seems to confirm that it's a reliable workhorse.

The main issue is that the telco is dropping maintenance on it. They'll no longer support it in a couple years and repairs now are straight labour plus parts.

I figured if I'm going to end up supporting the phone system myself, I might as well go to something I can better work on and understand.
Coming from an IT background and being a pretty fair UNIX/Linux admin, Asterisk made a lot of sense.
Plus, Asterisk is widely supported, and there's even good paid support options available. Also it seems very flexible and highly resistant to obsolescence. We can just keep upgrading or replacing whatever component we need to with no worries about vendor lock-in or dead upgrade path.
And these days, you even have to worry about your vendor going out of business and losing support/parts. How would you like to have been responsible for installing an expensive Nortel system last year and now have a freaking out customer?

Anyway, thanks for all the valuable feedback everyone. I certainly appreciate it.

Coming in late here but...
Looks like you have a 200 EL.
If you have the right kind of handsets (no 400 series) you can upgrade to a 3300ICP.
This will give you:
web interface
sip trunks
sip softphones
sip hard phones
teleworking
etc/more
All of this and more while still using the sets and most of the hardware you already own!