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TELEPHONE SYSTEM RELIABILITY
AEX has extensive experience servicing and installing the following telephone product lines. The reliability ratings are based solely on AEX's own experience installing and servicing each of these manufacturer's systems over a six year period. Future performance may be better or worse than past performance for each manufacturer.
ATT / LUCENT / AVAYA AEX Reliability Rating: 2 Fair. The old ATT Merlin products were built to last in the Western Electric tradition. In fact many of these systems are still in use with little or no problems. The same has not been true for the newer Spirit, Partner, and Merlin Legend telephones. Problems with breaks in the conductor membranes have plagued these telephones. When the conductor breaks a key or an entire row or column of keys stops working and the telephone requires repair. The Partner and occasionally the Legend systems suffer from problems with cards in the main processor becoming loose and losing power until they are reseated by a technician. The Partner systems also seem to be more susceptible than the average system to problems with lighting and electrical surges. |
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AEX Reliability Rating: 4 Excellent. In an era when many manufacturers are subcontracting out their manufacturing, Iwatsu is fully committed to the telephone system manufacturing business. This commitment shows in the reliability of their telephones and systems. Iwatsu's telephones and processors are typically very trouble free with the best published mean time between failure statistics in the industry. |
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NORTHERN TELECOM AEX Reliability Rating: 4 Excellent. Northern Telecom makes reliable, trouble free telephones and telephone cabinets. |
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PANASONIC AEX Reliability Rating: 4 Excellent. Panasonic systems tend to run forever. The white telephones yellow easily and the control units are more susceptible than the average to lightning strikes. Panasonic strongly recommends lightning protection for both the power and telephone lines with its systems. This is wise advice. |
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AEX Reliability Rating: 4- Excellent. We have installed a large number of 816 and 816Plus systems with very few problems. The control units rarely have any issues except for needing to have the memory backup battery changed after a few years. The older telephones had higher than normal handset failures but there have relatively few problems with the newer telephones. |
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AEX Reliability Rating: 3 Good. The original DCS telephone sets have been very durable. The control units are typically quite reliable with infrequent power supply failures and some intermittent problems with Expansion B cards. The Cadence voicemail had a high level of hard drive failures on the earlier versions and the software on the full DCS system has had occasional issues. The DCS 400si has had issues with T1 software and issues related to the 24 port digital station interface card. |
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VOICEMAIL SYSTEM RELIABILITY
The items that typically fail on a voicemail system are the moving parts such as hard drives and fans. Power supplies can also fail. Thus, the most reliable systems tend to be units, which are integrated inside the telephone system cabinet with flash memory (Avaya Partner VS, Iwatsu OmegaVoice VS, Samsung SVMi-4 and SVMi-8). These systems do not have any moving parts and they use the telephone system power supply. The power supplies in telephone systems are typically more reliable than PC based power supplies. If you require more storage than flash based memory can provide, then a hard disk based integrated system is a good but somewhat less reliable option. Virtually every manufacturer has had problems with hard drive reliability at some point in time with the early Samsung Cadence systems being an extreme example. External voicemail systems (Amanda, Norstar Startalk and Flash, Panasonic KXT100, etc.) are becoming less common in the new marketplace both for cost and reliability reasons. However, they may still be the best choice for demanding applications, which the integrated products don't fit, or for integration with an existing telephone system that does not offer an integrated voicemail option.
| Integrated Flash Memory Voicemails | Avaya Partner VS, Iwatsu OmegaVoice VS, Samsung SVMi4 and SVMi8 |
| Integrated Hard Drive Voicemails | Iwatsu OmegaVoice VML, Samsung Cadence |
| External Flash Memory Voicemails | Aleen, Norstar Startalk Flash, Panasonic KXT |
| External Hard Drive Voicemails | Amanda products, Norstar Startalk, Panasonic KXT , Samsung Starmail |