sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Avaya - Lucent Telephones & Systems Connecting Two Buildings

We have a Lucent Partner ACS 3.0 system in a 5-slot cabinet with voicemail at our current location and are looking to connect the system to a second building we'll be leasing about 150 feet away. The total run for cabling would be about 800 feet. The plan was to make the run with 6-strand multimode fiber. We would also use a couple of the fiber strands for data. The total number of phone extensions required would be about 30 with roughly 15 incoming lines. In our scenario, would 9 incoming lines and 24 extensions be our max? If so, could we purchase a second 5-slot cabinet and add a few more 308ec modules to expand the system? How does daisy-chaining the two cabinets work? I'm wondering if I'm not trying too hard to utilize existing equipment and might be better off starting with a new system.

Also, the quote I received for the equipment to convert the fiber to voice and data (TC8800/TC3340) on either end was over $10,000 so I'm not sure I can get the fiber system approved (or get it ran under the concrete for that matter). I'm not married to the fiber. Does it make more sense to utilize a T1 line somehow? (I could run a couple of cat6 lines with ethernet extenders for the data.)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Kevin G

1. You could theoretically have 9 lines, 36 extensions and voicemail module. Processor (308), 2 308 mods, 1 012 mod, 1 VMessaging mod.
2. Don't count on any equipment that will successfully convert a Partner ACS telephone to fiber and back again. If you want Partner phones, run copper. Even if you do something different, I'd pull copper just in case.
3. There is no graceful mechanism to connect two Partner ACS cabinets and have them feel like one system. There are several "rigs" that you could do - none them are graceful.

If this is a long-term arrangement, I'd start with a new system. You COULD use a Merlin Magix (now mfr discontinued) to support the Partner phones. Other considerations include:
- Do you need paging in second bldg?
- Do you need any analog telephone devices (fax, etc) in second bldg?

Good luck
Mike

You should be fine with digital phones at 800 feet .... i have a customer with two buildings and they have many partner phones in an outbuilding about 1,000 feet away.

Run a multi pair, category 3 cable to the new building and hook your extensions up... no need to go crazy with fiber or cat 6 for voice.

Grebinski, use an ACS 7 or 8 with 3 308ec cards and vm, this will get you close ( 14 lines x 33 stations ). Use copper for the phones count your needed pairs and double it. Use burial ( icy pic ) cable only for the phone. Fiber w/ media converters for data. I would hire someone with a line bore trencher, have them pull in 2' PVC conduit. If you need someone good to line bore for you PM me and I will put you in touch with a company in Traverse City, ( they go all over the state).

Kev,
That ACS R.3 is getting some age on it, as you probably already know.

If it was me, I would up-grade to a IP Office Essential edition.

Then for connecting the to buildings, if you have line of site between the two, put in a good quality commercial grade point-to-point wireless and hang IP phones on the other side and beam your data pipe over the same point-to-point connection.

We have did this kind of set up with several customers and it works great.