Does your old phone system need replacing?

Someone has probably told you it does. Usually that someone is selling the replacement.

We are in an awkward position to answer, because we do both. We fix old systems and we install new ones. So here is the version we give people on the phone.

Age on its own tells you nothing

We still look after Avaya IP Office, Samsung OfficeServ and Panasonic NS700 systems that went in more than a decade ago. Most of them are fine.

A phone system is not a laptop. It sits in a cupboard at a steady temperature doing one job, and the parts that fail are the ones that move or carry power. A fan. A power supply. The battery on the main board, which fails quietly and usually gets blamed on something else.

If it does what you need and the handsets work, age is not a reason to spend money.

The one that actually matters is parts

Everything else on this list you can see coming. This one you cannot.

A card fails, we go looking for a replacement, and the only ones left are secondhand out of somebody else’s decommissioned system. That is the point where yours stops being maintainable, and it is worth knowing before it happens rather than after, because from then on a single fault is a week off the phones instead of an afternoon.

We will tell you when yours is getting close. We would rather sell you a system while you have time to plan it than on the morning your phones are down.

Three more worth watching

Your lines are changing. Most of the old copper has gone. If you are still on ISDN or a mix of copper services, that change is coming whether the system is healthy or not, and it is the natural moment to ask whether the box behind it is worth keeping. Some older systems take SIP happily. Others want a card that costs more than the system is worth.

You have outgrown it. Every system has a ceiling on extensions and lines. If you are shuffling people around to make a number fit, you hit that ceiling a while ago.

It is costing more than it is worth. Rarer than you would think. But if we are out there three times a year on something already out of support, we will say so rather than keep invoicing you for it.

What to do about it

Ring us and describe what it is doing. Most of the time we can tell you what is wrong from the description, because we have seen it on that model before. If it is a fault, we usually fix it remotely while you are still on the phone.

If it turns out the system has had its day, we will tell you that too, and you can look at a cloud system knowing you are not throwing out something with years left in it. Parts and service lists what we maintain.

We have been doing this since 1991, across more than 3,000 sites. It is usually not as bad as whoever quoted you the replacement made it sound.