Customer has a MICS with one open expansion port on the six port expansion module. He has two PRIs and about 50-60 or so phones. He needs to incorporate a separate business on the same floor in the same building (they now have a Toshiba with 10 loop start lines and 11 phones.)The Toshiba is going away (lease runs out) and they want to purchase a used 824DR5 so that they can network the two systems together. Do I purchase E&M Trk cards?? Do they have to purchase E&Ms from the local carrier--or can we link them together using in house cable? I am somwhat familiar with a 3 location (CA, IL, NY)network that works using 200, 300 & 400 series extensions & E&M cards with Frame relay but have never networked a Nortel from scratch. Any advice will be helpful. TIA.

You can use E&M cards with house cables ,you don't need teleco Involved here at all .You will need to program E&M lines as tie lines with auto answer and program target lines in each system to route the calls to each extension.I hope that helps.

Wouldn't it be better to upgrade to XC software and just add on to the MICS?

Upgrade it the way to go. If he only currently has 50-60 phones, and two PRI's, what are the rest of the expansion ports being used for? do you have a trunk mod in one of those that you are not using? Get rid of that, and there is 32 more phones for you.