PBX phone system upgrade
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da
Jan 27, 2026, 9:31:40 AM (9 days ago) Jan 27
to WELSTech
Blessings All!
Pastor Dave Arndt
Our 25 year old Panasonic PBX phone system is failing and our 62 year old tech guy (me) has no clue where to go from here. We have 25 phones in the building, no fiber and currently have inet through Spectrum. We will need to have actual phone like devices :) We are in Two Rivers, WI. Anyone have expertise, a contact or room on their prayer list?
Thanks!
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St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church & School
Trivers, WI
"Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance; 'Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners - of whom I am the worst.'" 1 Timothy 1:15
Sehloff, John
Jan 27, 2026, 9:51:19 AM (9 days ago) Jan 27
to da, WELSTech
I recently did upgrades to Mt. Olive Lutheran's (ELS - Mankato, MN) phones. We were running an on premise 3CX system on a computer with 4 local lines provided by the local phone company. I switched our lines to Voxtelesys and moved the on premise out to 3CX's cloud. We have a similar number of phones and are on a 500 Mb Spectrum connection (also no fiber). The savings from what we were paying for the local lines will pay the cost of new phones, the installation and the 3CX hosting within a year. Our monthly bill from Voxtelesys is around $25, annual hosting from 3CX I think was $300. There are added benefits if you choose to use them such as an app for your cell phone, ease of adding a second location if needed, automated backups of your configuration ... I have not missed getting the call from the secretary letting me know a Windows update or power outage had knocked out the phones and could I please come over and get things working again.
The last piece I am working on is to move our fire panel notification on to our internet connection. We are still paying around $90/month to Fidium for a dedicated phone line and my alarm monitoring thought the part needed to interface to my data network would be around $300 plus making sure I have a UPS on my network switch and Internet router. Again the savings will pay for the install costs.
John Sehloff
Director of Information Technology
John.S...@blc.edu | 507.344.7342 | www.blc.edu
Bethany Lutheran College
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Mahnke, James
Jan 27, 2026, 10:22:31 AM (9 days ago) Jan 27
to da, WELSTech
We are in a similar situation and are actively looking at upgrading our own phone system.
Things to consider:
- POTS (plain old telephone service – traditional phone lines) is no longer required by the FCC as of 2022 for carriers to support. This means any new phone system should look only at digital options like VOIP.
- Emergency or critical systems (elevators/fire panels/etc.) should consider cellular service to continue working during power outages when Internet connections may fail
- For smaller installations it is suggested to use a local vendor to install & support the new phone system. Typically management is cloud based.
- Internet connections from cable providers typically have a fast download speed but very limited upload speeds. E.g. 400 Mb down/20 Mb up. This can affect your phone system with the limited bandwidth “up”. There are ways to reserve bandwidth for your phone system with QoS but you may want to consider switching to fiber for a more robust connection.
James Mahnke
Luther High School, Onalaska, WI
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Jason Schmidt
Jan 27, 2026, 12:37:19 PM (9 days ago) Jan 27
to Mahnke, James, da, WELSTech
We are in the midst of this project in Oshkosh. Our scale is WAY bigger than what you're doing, but 3CX barely doesn't work for our system. If you're looking for professional services I would recommend checking into Wire Technologies out of Kaukauna. Your biggest expense will be handsets, so I would expect you'd probably pay somewhere around $3000 for this project.
Call them up and they will be able to give you a good idea of what you might need in addition with fax/POTS, etc, too.
Feel free to reach out to me directly if you want additional support.
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Joshua Schoeneck
Jan 27, 2026, 1:07:05 PM (9 days ago) Jan 27
to Jason Schmidt, Mahnke, James, da, WELSTech
I echo the thoughts of the others. An additional service for fire/elevator/alarm systems may be short-range radio if your monitoring company has it available. Our fire system requires two different methods of communication so it connects via our VOIP phone system plus a short-range radio. They attempted to use cellular, but could not get a reliable signal in the required location.
IF you have someone on-site with the time and ability to manage a system and want to avoid monthly system costs, there are several vendors that have affordable, locally installed systems with no ongoing contract. We have been using Grandstream for about 5 years for a system with about 120 phones. We have VOIP service through VOIP.ms that I'm paying about $25/month for (its based on volume, not per month) and the cost of the system (a UCM 6302 can be found for under $300) plus handsets, which come in a variety of feature sets, but most are under $100 and I often buy used on Ebay. I also use a GXW4008 analog IP gateway device to connect 3 elevator phones, a fire system phone, and our outgoing fax, which are all analog/POTS devices.
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Luke Johnson
Jan 28, 2026, 12:10:12 PM (8 days ago) Jan 28
to da, WELSTech
Morning, as always, probably no exactly right answer to this question, just opinions.
Outside of my day job, I try to be an MSP for several small businesses in town, andI have several mom-n-pop's that find themselves in the same predicament... failing nortel/avaya legacy pbx, no spare handsets, and still no super easy plug-and-play VOIP solutions.
One of my customers found this product and asked me to implement it for them:
I was extremely skeptical. Hardware seemed lightweight and junky, the website seemed like a QVC commercial, limited feature set, etc, etc.
I think it's important to admit when you are wrong.
For the first of my SMBs (and now a second) it was EXACTLY what they wanted. Very basic PSTN integration (plug in 1ea-4ea POTS lines), some intercom functionality, no new CAT5/6 wiring (they only had 2 pair), no subscription costs (I think the upfront costs are reasonable too). We even called support (DOA handset), and I was shocked, they were in the US and super responsive and helpful.
I do agree with the comment about getting fire and elevator to cellular systems ASAP (not to mention the cost savings of dropping a dedicated POTS line just for those requirements).
I also agree VOIP is the future (former job, I had 1000+ phones on Cisco UCC for nearly 20yrs), but I think for commercial applications of <25 phones... kicking the can down the road for 5-10 more years is probably acceptable.
I've never tried 3CX, so no opinion, but it seems reasonable.
Outside of suggesting XBlue a DIY option, as Jason mentioned... maybe find your own local MSP/Integrator and see if they can find you a VOIP solution at a decent price ($/handset/mo) and leverage their bulk purchasing power and technical staff. In my day job (ISP) I've seen peer organizations use services like https://atheral.com/ to provide PSTN/ATA and manage all of the VOIP complexities. But again, probably a bridge too far for a small organization.
Hope you find an easy solution!
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