sundance-communications.com/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information changing from centrex to pots

I have a macrotel mt-16h telephone system with centrex service
(6 lines). I want to switch to pots but need to be sure that the mt-16h system is compatible with pots. Phone company said to be sure prior to switching. Can anyone help.

As long as you don't have any need for the Centrex features, there will be no problem. Centrex and POTS lines are electrically the same thing. Centrex lines just have more features.

Ed is spot on.

The only difference is features and you won't need to dial 9 to make a call.

Ed, correct me if I'm wrong, but there is digital centrex.
We ran into a customer about 10 years ago that had them with special centrex Nortel sets on them.
We had to convert the lines to analog POTS before upgrading them to an Avaya Partner.

I don't think the OP has digital centrex, but just sayin......

Very true, Mike. I wasn't worried about that in this instance since the OP mentioned that they have a Macrotel system that was made before digital Centrex was even available. I made the assumption that they are using traditional Centrex lines because of this.

Thanks for the clarification Ed.
I just didn't want others thinking that centrex only came in analog.

No kidding, Mike. We still have lots of customers in these parts using digital Centrex. Most are government accounts, but there are surely others out there. I don't think that digital Centrex ever really took off here much since ISDN came along offering two phones on a single BRI line shortly thereafter. The dollars made the difference.