Anyone know much about PBX phones??

[NeoPTLD]

I'm at a university and we have a PBX system. We dial the last five digits for all on-campus calls and 9-xxx-xxxx for off campus calls.

We use regular phones in our dorm rooms and caller ID doesn't work, but when I used a phone at one of the office equipped w/ a business phone, it was able to decode the phone # into who/what room I'm calling and these phones are also capable of displaying who's calling.

If I have an on-campus #, I wouldn't know who it belongs to. But if I punch it into one of those business phone, it will show something like "CALLAHAN(hall name) 413(room#).

One of the few types of phones they use for this is AT&T 8410D business phone

So, is it just a matter of getting this phone and plugging it into my jack or does the line have to be specifically provisioned for that?

 

[AFB]

Just guessing its provisioned. I'm probaly wrong.

 

[MysticLlama]

I'd imagine that it could very well be either way, and you wouldn't know until you tried.

When I worked at MS we had callerID, but only if you happened to get lucky enough to receive a phone with a CID display on it. A lot of time coke got spilled to try to pull a CID phone from the lottery.

 

[mobly99]

Last time I touched a definity phone switch, there were separate line cards for analog phones and for digital phones - so if you have an analog phone, I would imagine that you are going to an analog port.
Further, even if you had a digital port - the correct model of phone would have to be configured for the port that you are connected to.

 

[madwok]

Hello,

It seems to me that your campus are using an AT&T/Lucent/Avaya type of PBX .
The "call ID" that showed up when you called the 5 digits actually are station name which is programmed by your PBX administrator .

If your dorm phone is an analog, you can not plug it into the digital jack that connects to an 8410D or vise versa .

Hope that help !

 

[NeoPTLD]

madwok:

thanks, that's what I learned to. The telecommunication says dorm lines are never provisionied for digital service.