Brian Capouch wrote:
I haven't dealt with Centrex for a long time, and one of my customers is
being courted heavily by a Sprint salesperson.
Am I not correct in assuming that each "line" of Centrex corresponds to
an "extension" in the PBX world?
This site has 2 POTS lines and 5 extensions, and they told me that for
the same thing they're paying right now (~$40/POTS line) they will be
getting two Centrex "lines" that will do the same thing.
The way I understood it, each of those two Centrex lines is an extension.
In general, would they still be paying their POTS fees, too?
Sorry for the noise, but I can't discuss this intelligently with them,
and that's hurting me.
Historically, there were two forms of Centrex provided by US telcos.
Centrex, which was based on a shared pbx typically located on the telco
promises, and, CO Centrex which was based on the Central Office switch
with added software features. I'd have to guess the majority of the
current Centrex implementations are actually CO Centrex now, however I
did run into a recent case (a college) where Qwest was still using a CO
based pbx.
Both were tariffed by the telcos with rates that were different then
normal central office business lines, presumably due to shared
maintenance costs (and features). (Eg, smoke and mirrors.)
Regardless of which implementation Sprint might be using, from the
central office perspective, a Centrex line is the same physical thing as
a pots business line. If your customer has been quoted two Centrex
lines, its two physical connections (or max two simultaneous calls).
It is possible they might also be providing more then two extension
numbers using something like distinctive ringing, or, some form of
subscriber carrier system to mux two extensions over a single line
(doubt that), or mapping five extension numbers at the CO onto two
physical Centrex lines.
The more likely case is Sprint is simply displacing your customer's on
site equipment (presumably a key system) with two lines (with different
numbers or extensions) and five phones. Nothing more, nothing less.
A Centrex line is the same thing as a pots line from a customer's bill
perspective. In your case, the bill will only have two Centrex line
charges (no pots charges), plus any features they happen to be selling
as optional items. (Optional items are typically voicemail services,
voicemail LED on their phones, possibly custom calling features, etc, etc.)
Without more info, that's about the best guess you're going to get.
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