Re interfacing to the proprietary digital station lines on PBXs:
There is a company located in Buffalo NY that makes PC plug-in
interface cards for major PBX digital phone lines. (AT&T/Lucent,
Northern, ROLM, etc.) Their name is Voice Technologies Group. My
rolodex is old, but try: 716-689-6700. Ask for David Straitiff or
Les Meszaros.
The PC add-in card solution may not be exactly what you are looking
for, but I would recommend checking with VTG since they are in the
business of interfacing products to proprietary PBX links.
******************************************************************
Pete Bonee phone: 408-988-7208
VP Product Operations fax: 408-988-6520
Latitude Communications [email protected]
2121 Tasman Drive http://www.latitude.com
Santa Clara, CA 95054
******************************************************************
______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: POTS interface to digital PBXs
Author: [email protected] at Internet
List-Post: [email protected]
Date: 3/11/97 6:59 AM
In a message dated 97-03-04 11:12:56 EST, you write:
<< My company currently makes a product with a standard daa pots
interface. We would like to interface to the 3 or 4 most popular
digital pbx systems (digital supervisory data + pcm). Is there
any process to get this proprietary information? Any suggestions?
>>
Well, I've been down this road a couple of times, and the landscape isn't
pretty.
The TE interfaces to digital PBXs are proprietary and non-standard. They are
not even standardized among different terminal devices or different switches
from the same vendor. Furthermore, I do not think you are likely to succeed
in getting four different vendors to share their interface specifications
with you. Basically, I think you have three possible options:
1) Select ONE vendor, and convince them that they stand to benefit if they
cooperate with you in adapting your product to their system. This might work
if the vendor wants to private-label your product or cross-promote it with
you.
2) Tell your customers that they must use an analog port on the digital PBX.
Virtually all digital PBX vendors offer analog line cards that provide a
standard analog POTS interface.
3) Design your product to interface to the (analog) handset port on specific
PBX station sets. This interface is not standard, either, but it is easier
to reverse engineer than the digital interface. However, there are
performance limitations with this approach.
4) Use an adapter device that accomplishes item #3 above. One that I have
seen is the "Konexx" adapter. I think the manufacturer is Unlimited Systems
in San Diego.
I hope these suggestions are helpful, even though they are probably not what
you wanted to hear.
Joe Randolph
Telecom Design Consultant
Randolph Telecom, Inc.
