atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems NEC Telephones & Systems NEC Electra Elite IPK II from POTS to VoIP...

One other technical point:

As far as NEC is concerned, they own the licenses on the PBXes, and when a system is "inherited" the new user only has ownership of the hardware, not the licenses to the software.

What that means in the real world is that if the IPK II were still supported, and if you went to NEC for licenses to add a PVA card, they would make you re-license the PBX itself. Those original licenses were agreements between NEC and the prior owner.

It's a bit of a technicality, and I don't know how stringently NEC is enforcing it these days -- back in the 90s, Mitel used to get very upset over license issues, but that's a different company and a different decade.

Update for my situation:

In further discussion with the previous support team and researching my NEC's current configuration, it was determined that our system is actually running on a fractional T1 line and not traditional POTS lines. That pretty much sealed the deal for us being able to be flexible with this existing system.

So, I began researching replacements. The previous support team offered to price out an NEC SL1100 system, and I got quotes for hosted VOIP PBXs as well.

I ended up building my own FreePBX system using a extra computer and buying Polycom VVX 500 phones. Our new system went live yesterday.

I ended up going this route because of the built-in planned obsolescence of the proprietary systems. The NEC Electra Elite IPK II system we have is an entirely good system that fully meets and exceeds our needs as a small business. NEC's decision to simply disallow any further functionality modification based on a software license essentially made this entire, fully functional phone system junk overnight. Given such a situation, I was not enthusiastic to buy in to such a program again.

The FreePBX system is open source and commercially available and supported modules make the system flexible, robust and upgradable over the long term. We can add and remove phones and features easily and inexpensively and we're not locked into that path of planned obsolescence.

So, if anyone is interested in components of an NEC Electra Elite IPK II phone system, let me know. I've got a bunch of phones, cards and 2 KSUs (a standard wall mount one and a rack mounted 2U one).

I hope you have better luck with the FreePBX open source. You are going to find out in the long run it's not so free.

We have had 4 companies in the past 5 years go back to the traditional systems. They seem to like getting prompt support.

If you have issues good luck finding someone to help you debug it when you need it.

Well, I can't say NEC has necessarily been a good solution for the long run either. Considering that the entirety of the support I've gotten from our NEC system was from this forum, and many people's answer was just "replace it", I can't say my expectations are all that high. FWIW, I don't consider "replace it" as support. NEC flat out refused to even talk to me about this system, my service provider has told me for at least 2 years they no longer supported the system, and none of the local installers could/would help me. I couldn't touch this system for fear of having it go down. A replacement PCMCIA II voicemail flash card for this NEC costs double the cost of the new solid state hard drive I just bought for my new FreePBX system.

I built the FreePBX system myself using a standard computer and everyday networking components. This hardware is cheap, available and its not proprietary. I'm not a phone system installer, I'm a commercial architect and I own my own small business. Our NEC system cost $17k when it was installed 7 years ago in our building, and a replacement NEC system would cost me at least $3k, and any modification to that system would likewise cost substantial money plus installation.

I got this system up and running with a total expenditure of about $1400, and I spent a few evenings a week for about 3 weeks teaching myself how to do it. And when we move our office in a few months and get a different service provider, its not going to cost me thousands in modifications, licensing and labor that the new NEC system would have. And where is support for that NEC going to be in 5 years? Its going to be "Replace it", just like it is today. I just don't see how that is such a good deal.

Sounds to me you lost money. Good luck!