Category Archives: Nortel

New Year, New Phone System Gear!

Is YOUR business phone system 5-10 years old? God forbid it is not OLDER than that as it simply qualifies for display at the Smithsonian in that case.

The biggest improvements in telecom systems in the past 5+ years are things like #BYOD, Mobile Extension, Voice Mail to Email, improvements to integrated #UC (Unified Communications), SIP trunking, etc. If your business telephone system is older than that, there is a good chance it does NOT include capabilities for these advanced but necessary features in the age of improved accessibility from clients, suppliers, and co-workers.

In the spirit of New Years Resolutions, it’s time to propose a new telephony platform for YOUR business!

Here’s some choices in a varied range of features and pricing:

Avaya IP Office – After purchasing the SMB platforms from Nortel, Avaya captured an “Upgrade with us” capability and have been porting clients over to the Avaya IP 500 phone system by allowing Nortel users to keep their existing phones. This prevented the Nortel ICS line from eventually becoming a dead end for users. Expansion is a snap as well, with IP 500 Expansion cards and modules. Users can eventually add to and/or replace phones with a wide range of choices of new Avaya IP Office phones.

NEC SV8100 phone system – This system has all of the features mentioned below. We love Voice Mail to Email and Mobile Extension to keep in touch with your clients, even when you are not in the office.

Avaya / Nortel BCM – When Avaya took over the Nortel SMB lines, one of the exciting acquisitions was the Business Communication Manager – or BCM. The BCM starts with the small business BCM 50, a compact but powerful IP capable telephone system. The other currect BCM brought over initially to Avaya was the BCM 450 for enterprise clients. Both of these platforms are easily expandable with a variety of optional hardware, referred to as BCM Media Bay Modules, and software, often called BCM Key Code Licenses.

Regardless of which phone system you choose to upgrade to, think about all the things you wish to do with your business telephones and then call Ryan Altseimer toll-free at 1.855.929.9199, extension 3007, to match your requirements and budget to an appropriate system. Happy New Year from all of us at Telephone Magic – we hope to assist you with YOUR New Year’s Telecom Resolution!

Merry Christmas from all of us at Telephone Magic!

What a year it has been! Many changes and tons of improvements that directly benefit our customers. We would just like to take the time to reach out to our clients, friends, and family to wish everyone the very best of the holiday season and a Happy New Year.

christmas-tree

 

Some of the improvements we have made this year include full overhauls of our websites, including our main US / International Website, our Canadian Web Portal, and our Hotel Room Phones site.

New features include our “Express Quote” option and we now offer on-site Live Chat to answer any questions you may have. We also have improved site navigation with a “Mega-Menu” and easy to find and use site Search.

Our blog has moved on site and we now have a complete suite of social media sites to allow our clients to stay in touch with us. We have a lot of content on our new YouTube channel, almost 1300 Followers on our Twitter feed, and a ton of great telecom photos on our Pinterest account.

Again, all the best for the holidays and we look forward to serving you in the 2014!

Jeff Jackson

President, Telephone Magic Inc.

Telephone Magic YouTube Videos – More "Telecom Tips"

Telephone Magic YouTube.com channel “Telecom Tips” series now includes a new video post:

The Nortel / Avaya 1100 Series IP Internet Telephones are supported by a variety of Nortel Networks communication systems: BCM 50 R3.0 or later, Nortel Communication Server 1000 with backward compatibility to R4.0, Nortel Communication Server 2100 (initial support with Release SE10), Nortel Communication Server 2000 (SN09U and later), Supported on Media Gateway 1000B Expansion Chassis, Survivable Remote Gateway 50 (R3.0 and later).
These phones are prominently featured in the HBO TV Series “The Newsroom” starring Jeff Daniels.
Originally manufactured by Nortel for the BCM and Communication Server lines, these IP phones are now branded by Avaya as part of the SMB portfolio merger.

#Telecom #News – July 7th- July 20th, 2013

Telephone Magic Continues Support for Nortel/Aastra Meridian Centrex Phones

July 19, 2013 — Telephone Magic now offers replacement Nortel Meridian M5000 Centrex MBS 2 telephones with “As New” warranties at wholesale prices to enterprise clients. New Aastra Centrex phones are also available to ensure an ongoing supply to Cental Office controlled phone networks.

Telephone Magic Continues Support for Nortel Meridian 1 and Option 11C Phones

July 17, 2013 — As enterprise phone systems age, the first things to go are the phones. Telephone Magic now offers replacement Nortel Meridian M2000 and M3900 phones / Avaya 3900 series digital telephones with “As New” warranties at wholesale prices to large enterprise clients.

New Nortel/Avaya Phone Headsets Provide Direct-Connect Options for Business Users

July 16, 2013 — Business office staff can avoid the added expense of purchasing headset amplifiers with Telephone Magic “Direct-Connect” phone headset options for Nortel/Avaya Norstar, Meridian, and BCM phone system telephones.

Polycom SoundPoint IP SIP Phones – the Most Interoperable for IP-PBX Platforms

July 12, 2013 — The new Polycom SoundPoint IP phone Series from Telephone Magic is an enterprise-grade family of SIP desktop phones designed to make voice communications effective and productive.

NEC SV8100 Phone System Represents the Utimate in Unified Communications

July 11, 2013 — New NEC SV8100 phone system platform meets business demands for efficient, seamless communication to enable rapid decision-making and customer responsiveness. Telephone Magic offers the SV8100 to help small to medium-sized businesses succeed by placing people at the center of communications.

New Avaya 9500 Phones Ideal for Mixed Digital/IP Telephone Deployment

July 08, 2013 — Avaya 9500 Series digital telephones look and function like the Avaya 9600 Series IP Deskphones and can be deployed in mixed digital/IP telephony environments – the premium choice for businesses to add digital endpoints from Telephone Magic with a consistent appearance and user experience.


Keeping up with the Social Media "Jones’s" a Full Time Job

At Telephone Magic, we sell business phones at wholesale prices.

We are currently in our 25th year in business and we love what we do – it’s exciting, always changing, we get to work with cutting edge phone system technology from worldwide leaders such as Avaya, NEC, Cisco, and Nortel.

Nortel BCM50 Avaya BCM telephone systemThe new world of Internet marketing does not just require additions, changes, and updates of HTML code and pages for our websites though. Now as much time is being spent updating the many and varied sources of Social Media Marketing.

Like other savvy and successful online companies, Telephone Magic is on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, and – oh yes – we also Blog!

Don’t get me wrong, it’s actually quite a bit of fun reaching out and touching the people who utilize our business telephone products every day in their day to day life. We appreciate our clients and we strive to give them the best personalized service in the industry. We feel, more than others, we create long-lasting relationships with our customers and they tend to come back time and time again due to the personalized rapport we forge with them.

On the other hand, Social Media is, in itself, a full time job, equal to, and in many cases, much more work than our websites they drive. I am certain many of you, as small, medium, and even large businesses, struggle to find the time in the day to juggle all of their social media sites, trying to be as responsive as possible while also trying to get their regular work done in a timely fashion.

I have talked to many business owners/managers/CEO’s that wonder how anyone is supposed to do all that social media demands without employing the full time efforts of a dedicated person. No doubt, it is tough. On one hand you don’t want to drop the ball, fail to make regular posts, and not get back to potential customers when they come knocking at your various social media outlets. On the other you have to deal with real world financial constraints driven by the economy which prevent you from carving out yet another salary from a potentially diminishing pie.

On top of this, your products are almost always evolving and new information is coming out regularly and needs to be updated on your actual website. Now let us try to keep up with as much of that work as possible to ensure the site you wish to promote with all your social media venues is not itself becoming stale and outdated, causing it to fall in the rankings of our friends at Google, and other search engines.

The Social Media challenge is certainly a real one and we all have to either deal with it in the best way we can with the limited time we have or, God forbid, simply ignore it and the world around us that has embraced and promoted it. Right, that is not an option. Time to get back to our Facebook page!

Phone System Manuals & User Guide Links: Nortel Meridian Norstar, Avaya IP Office, and NEC SV8100

We get TONS of calls each week for technical assistance with Nortel Norstar and Meridian phone systems. Ditto for Avaya IP Office and NEC SV8100 telephone system platforms.

While we DO supply limited technical support to clients that purchased their business phone equipment from Telephone Magic Inc., there is no way for us to be on site or offer no-cost help to non-clients. In a nutshell, how would we stay in business if we gave away the farm (time and technical staff) to callers that never purchased their telephone system from us directly?

That out of the way, Telephone Magic DOES have a wealth of information readily available on our website that is FREE for visitors to access and/or download to assist them with minor technical issues or for educational purposes related to their business phone system.

Telephone Magic’s main phone system manuals page contains user guides, brochures and information related to the Nortel Norstar and Merdian telephone systems, Avaya IP office IP 500 platform, NEC Univerge SV8100 IP phone system and much more. We encourage everyone to utilize this vast resource as a means to help with minor programming issues, etc.

Telephone Magic has long since been a leading source for wholesale business phones, telephone system parts, cards, equipment, etc.. On the other hand, when it comes to actual service related to major problems with your telephone system, we always recommend that you contact a authorized dealer in your local area.

While local telecom dealers not always competitive when it comes to pricing for wholesale system phones and hardware, they usually offer prompt and efficient service on the brand they specialize in. They can keep your business telephone system running efficiently and handle any adds/moves/changes you may require.

Protect Your Nortel Investment By Migrating to Avaya IP Office Version 7.0 for IP500 V2

Avaya’s acquisition of Nortel in 2009 has resulted in the expected cancellation of BCM telephone systems in 2011, with migration into IP Office being the only stated way forward. As experienced IP Office dealers for over 5 years, Telephone Magic Inc. is in a unique position to help you transition to an Avaya IP Office IP500 phone system with the minimum of fuss.
How Your Nortel Upgrade Protects You: Security
Phone systems can and do go wrong; vendors may not like to admit this but issues do occur. As a company critically dependant on communication with the outside world through your phone system, the last situation that you want to be in is being out of support on an end of life telephone system, with no facility for spares, repairs, vendor issue support etc. This is why we recommend to users that you should be no more than 2 versions behind the latest software and absolutely not on end-of-life hardware.
How Your Nortel Upgrade Protects You: Handsets

With handsets being typically between 40 and 60% of the value of your existing handset, the ability to re-use these and gradually upgrade your BCM system at a steady pace avoids the rip and replace scenario which will inevitably ensue once it is end of life and spares/repairs become completely unavailable and critical issues start to occur.
How Your Nortel Upgrade Protects You: Training

All extensions will be converted with one click, including voicemails brought over, and your users will need no additional training. Your users will then start to become acquanted with the IP Office software at a gradual pace, giving you scope to enlarge or upgrade further to, for example, IP Office IP telephony, when the time suits you, rather than as a response to issues.
How Your Nortel Upgrade Protects You: Data Migration Manager Tool

Avaya have developed a special centralized migration tool which transfers your handsets and voicemail over to IP Office 7.0. “Data Migration Manager”. Using a three step process namely Extract, Convert and Apply, all announcements, greetings and voicemail messages can easily be transferred, resulting in a significant reduction in installation times and cost. The tool supports Norstar v7, BCM200/400/1000 R4, BCM50 R3/R5/R6 and BCM450 R1/R5/R6 as source system, and it is expected that the tool will evolve to handle the extraction, conversion and transfer of Auto-Attendant customer announcements in the future.

How Your Nortel Upgrade Protects You: Wiring

If your business has traditional phone system wiring, you can continue using it with your Avaya IP Office solution. If you have a Local Area Network (LAN) to connect your PCs/servers, you can use that instead. Avaya IP Office works with either kind of wiring—the choice is yours and the savings of using existing wiring are significant. Common wiring interfaces available with Avaya IP Office reduce the re-wiring often associated with replacement of a communication system—making the upgrade fast and easy.
How Your Nortel Upgrade Protects You: Growing

As your business grows, Avaya IP Office easily grows with you. There won’t be a need for another upgrade anytime soon. Avaya IP Office can handle hundreds of extensions.
How Your Nortel Upgrade Protects You: Gradual Replacement of Your BCM

When you upgrade to Avaya IP Office, you can keep using your Nortel phones and replace them on an as needed basis. Or, make plans to equip select employees—executives, receptionists, sales and customer service reps, etc.—who can really benefit from the added features of the new Avaya IP phones or Avaya digital phones. Either way, by being smart and managing the use of your existing phones you can protect up to 60 percent of your initial investment and still gain the benefits of a new solution.