atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Best system for a teaching environment?

Merritt, the Ericsson MD110 ( BC 11 ) will do all of that. But I have to warn you OMG they are very expensive. If you can find one used somewhere that would be the way to go. But make sure the software is BC 11 because anything less ( BC 9 ) does not have VOIP. There may be a newer version but I'm not aware of it if there is.

if you had about three of avaya's small ip office control units and a room full of lan terminals, you could load the ip office manager program on all of the terminals and let all of the students work on off line configurations at the same time.for testing they could upload their changes and see their results on a real switch. avaya may have a special offer that they can make you under the circumstances.

My first job in the industry was as a co-op student from an electronics program. I couldn't understand why they wanted to hire me when I knew absolutely nothing about the industry. Now I understand...there really isn't enough training being done for these jobs. An electronics tech is as close as they can get in most cases.

We have two interconnects here that have ongoing job postings that are never filled. Out East, Bell Canada always has about 50 job postings for technicians. "Experience is an asset. Grade 12 diploma required." The expectations seem to be getting rather low.

As for Ebay...I've looked, I've made bids, but I just haven't found a good enough deal on a new enough system. And again, I've limited my searches to the systems I know.

So that I understand, Clinton, are you just gathering information or are you in the actual process of buying equipment? The reason that I ask is that I am a huge fan of higher or continuing education. I would imagine that there are plenty of other members here who feel the same way.

I am sure that once you have your system selected, budget and shopping list put together that someone here will be able to get you the best deal on the hardware.

At this point I'm in the planning stage. I need to have a business case I can present to my department and say, "Yes, we can build an entire course around this material."

They think that if we teach a cabling course and a VoIP course, there isn't enough material left over for a full telephony course. I need to prove to them otherwise.

Having said that, I think I'm going to try and justify buying a new system for curriculum development. So Ed, if you would be kind enough to send me a price for the STSe with two phones, I'll see if I can't spend some money.


I'd also like to say thanks to everyone for your ideas and input. It's all very much appreciated.
:toast:

I would tend limit my choices of a key system to Lucent/Avaya Partner, Panasonic, or Norstar simply because they are popular, ie, in use. I would lean toward the Lucent or Panasonic becuase they use 1 AND 2 pair phones. Norstar just uses one pair.


I'm thinking about all the torture my wife had to go thru when I was starting out and installing variuos key systems in my home....

Richard

If you are going to select by marketshare/name brand NEC IS the largest in the key system arena.

Just curious where this last stat came from regarding NEC. A few years ago AT&T/Avaya had about 26% of all systems installed, Nortel had I think 24% of base systems. Two brands had 50% of the marketplace. This was a report from a firm called Northern Business Review or something close (I have a photo copy at my office). Things have shifted some, so I would be curious to verify the above claim. What percentage are they saying NEC has? Is that just new systems going out the door or is that installed base also? Please bring us up to date. There is very little NEC in this part of the country.

When i started in phone work, i was not allowed to touch sys, until i understood backbone wire,trace,and the difference between usoc,568a,568b and the systems they worked on. I should say i learned on 1a2 wire and systems before the newer sys. with 4pr. then 2pr. now 1pr. With voip,instant mess,vpn access,etc on systems now.laptop program,remote program and alarm reporting. A system that covers these items would seem to be the only one that a student should learn on if they expect to prosper. It seems that now i see three types of companies out here. Cabling voice or network,systems{ voice }only and last PC/Voice where they do both.

I agree with Marv. Focus on system basics more than an actual system itself. Base your courseware on the standard(yes, we do have some) practices and applications of a system. Trying to teach a course specfic to one brand or system makes it extremely difficult for practical applications. Case in point. I learned telecom they way most do, OJT. I went to work as a warehouse person and eventually worked my way into a field tech position. Everything that I learned, I learned from the guys around me, color code, DT, etc.. They did nothing but Iwatsu systems. If anyone has ever done Iwatsu, you know the wiring scheme of thiers is atypical to say the least. I worked there two years before I learned that black is the third wire and yellow is the fourth.

So if you want my two cents, get several different systems, learn the basics of systems, and teach your students to be able to adapt to different manufactors.