sundance-communications.com/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Centrex vs. Networked Phone system

Are there any advantages for a County Government of Centrex vs. a PBX networked to support 3 facilities. The PBX would have a T-1 coming in to the Courthouse and fiber feeds to 1 of the sites. The 3rd site has the ability to lease dry copper pairs for a minimal fee that we could create our own T-1 to network site 3. No monthly charge to network site 2 and a minimal charge to network site 3.

The phone company is offering Centrex service.

We are offering the 3 systems networked together to provide 4-digit dialing and the ability to eliminate many lines and share the T-1 for incoming and outgoing trunks.

Just curious as I am not overly familiar with Centrex.

JP:

Please take a moment to complete your profile for us. We need to know where you are because Centrex rates vary greatly in different parts of the country.

All Centrex is, is the phone company provides the switch so the customer just has cable pairs for stations. Centrex is not as feature rich as a PBX, but has plenty of features for what you're describing. I'd say from what you describe it may be cheaper also.

would personally go with a PBX over Centrex, you will have more features and much greater control over the system as a whole.

Your centrex service will have a basic charge per line with very few, if any, features. Features like call pickup within an office or three-way calling. Any additional feature(s) will incur a cost. When all is said and done, your costs are about double per line. Seen it too many time both municipal and school districts.

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.