UCx1000

[telcodog]

We just cutover our second customer onto a UCx1000 from CS1000s. Things went very smooth on both and the customers are very happy with how the systems operate with and the ease of administration.

They are both now looking into moving off their multiple PRIs and onto voip trunks. There are so many providers out there that it's sometimes difficult to know which one (or ones) that should be recommended. We tend to stick with the ones that have certified the UCx on their networks.

We were just wondering about other vendors and technicians about how their experiences moving customers off their old Nortel/Avaya boxes and onto the emetrotel systems have gone. Looking for stories we can share with potential customers and technicians(or horror stories).

 

[UCXNortel]

We use and recommend voip.ms . We are not a reseller of voip.ms services and that is by design because we want to legitimately recommend them with "no skin in the game". We had had very few issues with voip.ms and one of the features we really like is the easy admin. Our customers give us their login info and we assist them in managing things. Last week one of our multi-site customers had the power and broadband service knocked out of the location when someone hit a utility pole. Because of the ease of using the voip.ms service, we ALREADY had their failover numbers, in the event of being unreachable, set up to go to their cell phones in the event of loss of service such as was experienced last week, and we basically didn't have to do anything because or pre-preparation. When the power came back up at the customer location, the calls automatically came into the UCx with no action on our part.

As for moving the customers off of Nortel to UCx, if the "old" system is BCM, you can download the programming records from the BCM and use them as a guide to program the UCx. We had a 150 user BCM 450 customer that had all IP sets. we downloaded their BCM Programming Records and then programmed the UCx to look exactly like the BCM as close as possible. We even assigned the UCx the SAME IP address as the BCM 450, and when we did the cut over,we powered up the UCx 450 we simply disconnected the Ethernet and two PRI circuits from the BCM and connected them to the UCx and less than 10 minutes, ALL 150 users were up and working and the only downtime the customer had was the 10 minute period for all the phones to come online.

The SIP Trunk Providers that are supported and listed for UCx are:
Allstream
VoIP.ms
Skype
Broadvox
Flowroute
SIP Affinity
Sipgate
SIPmly
SoTel

If the provider is NOT listed, then the potential for issues using the service can be present and E-Metrotel may not provide support.

I hope this helps and have a blessed day!

http://www.ucidirect.com

Stocking Distributor for E-Metrotel

 

[RLSbutton]

Hi UCX Nortel,

I cut over a CS1000 unit to the UCx Meridian Digital Gateway over a year ago and I have been more than satisfied. I think its pretty awesome that I can use M7000 sets right next to M2000 sets, and all types of SIP phones and Nortel IP phones on one switch. What I find most useful, is that the Nortel digital M2000/M3900 sets operate almost identically to the M1/CS1000. What is even better is that in order to program the M2000/M3900 sets on the UCX you don't even need to know Meridian 1/CS1000 coding...you simply use the UCx GUI and you are able to program the Meridian phones much easier then entering all those LD/TN etc commands into a DOS format.

I've been curious. Will there be support for the Big 5 SIP trunk providers....AT&T, Verizon Business, Comcast, Time Warner, CenturyLink?

Thanks!

Joseph Sus Jr. Nortel Enthusiast

http://www.joetheucxguy.com

 

[UCXNortel]

All testing is performed through E-Metrotel so they would need to answer that question.

http://www.ucidirect.com

Stocking Distributor for E-Metrotel

 

[telcodog]

Emetro does charge those places to go through their testing procedures so unless someone is willing to foot the bill, you might have to do the integration testing with the vendor yourself and then provide the info to emetro. They might add it then.

 

[telcodog]

Thanks for the comments regarding SIP trunks. I just added that detail in the posting so people would know that they can take advantage of those new technologies immediately after upgrading to the UCx and the fact that they can be made to work in about 5 minutes if you use one of the carriers that have been certified.

I was actually more interested in comments from other techs, providers or even end user customers regarding the experience of switching over the UCx box...........was it smooth, technically simple, quick etc etc.

These experiences would be good to use for anyone else who is contemplating taking the plunge.

Thanks.

 

[UCXNortel]

Here is the example I used in my post above. This is a real life scenario that we did.

"As for moving the customers off of Nortel to UCx, if the "old" system is BCM, you can download the programming records from the BCM and use them as a guide to program the UCx. We had a 150 user BCM 450 customer that had all IP sets. we downloaded their BCM Programming Records and then programmed the UCx to look exactly like the BCM as close as possible. We even assigned the UCx the SAME IP address as the BCM 450, and when we did the cut over,we powered up the UCx 450 we simply disconnected the Ethernet and two PRI circuits from the BCM and connected them to the UCx and less than 10 minutes, ALL 150 users were up and working and the only downtime the customer had was the 10 minute period for all the phones to come online."

http://www.ucidirect.com

Stocking Distributor for E-Metrotel

 

[RLSbutton]

I recently worked with a company that converted their CS1000 from Nortel based to E-MetroTel based UCx1000. It went extremely smooth. The Nortel M2000/M3900 sets work identically to the way they do on CS1000.

The best thing? No more lines of code in order to program each telephone or system preferences. All of the programming is GUI based off the E-MetroTel UCx software.



Joseph Sus Jr. Nortel Enthusiast

http://www.joetheucxguy.com