Nortel business phones

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Nortel (previously Northern Telecom) manufactured telephones for business users from the 1980s to 2001, beginning with the Meridian series.

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Current phones

Nortel no longer exists as a company. There are no phones being manufactured for, or by, Nortel. Since 2001, phones with the Nortel brand are made by Aastra Technologies Limited of Concord, Ontario, whose parent company is Mitel.

Previous phones

Nortel's previous phones include:

Note: The "M" prefix before a Nortel telephone's model number indicated it was a "Meridian-series" model. For example, the Nortel Norstar M7208 would be Nortel Norstar Meridian M7208.

The "T-series" phones (e.g. T7208), were the newer phones that nortel developed, with a more modern look. They had the same features as the M-series Norstar phones but had a newer look - e.g. the M7208 had the same functionality as the T7208 phone. The T-series phones also had a message waiting indicator light that would flash for incoming calls and voicemails, which is a feature that the older Norstar M-series phones didn't have.

Nortel's Norstar series phones were only compatible with Nortel's KSU phone systems, such as the Nortel Norstar 3x8 (compatible for up to 3 lines and 8 Norstar phones), Nortel Norstar 6x16 (up to 3 lines and 8 Norstar phones), 8x24, CICS, MICS, BCM etc. Meridian phone systems such as the Meridian1 were only compatible with Meridian phones, such as the M2616.

Switching to VoIP

Nortel was a leader in proprietary digital telephone systems that required telephony wiring from the PBX unit to each phone. In most installations, the PBX would typically be hung on a wall in a dedicated telecommunications room/closet, and required much maintenance.

Note that Nortel was a manufacturer of Private Branch Exchange (PBX) and Key Service Unit (KSU) telephone systems. To summarize, the difference between PBX and KSU is that in a PBX configuration, a user normally has no "line buttons" that they have to press to access an external line. With a PBX, there is sometimes an access code required to access an outside line, most commonly it is "9" or "8" - e.g. "must dial 9 to call out." Meanwhile, a KSU telephone system requires the user to select a button for an outside line - e.g. press "Line 1" or "Line 2" or "Line 3" and the enter the phone number to call out. This is why a PBX is more common in larger installations with many lines, because it would be unfeasible to have more than 10 line buttons on a single phone, in most cases as the user would have to have a very large phone and press the appropriate button to select a line. The PBX would usually require the user to dial an external line access code (e.g. "9") in order to call out, and then the PBX would find a free line (a line that is not in use) and let the user call out through that free line. On the other hand, KSU telephone systems were very common in smaller installations, most notably in retail stores, restaurants, small to medium-sized offices, and in may other places. A Nortel phone on a desk was regarded as a "staple of 1990s to late 2000s telecommunications installations." The white/beige coloured Nortel phones usually turned an ugly yellow colour after being exposed to sunlight due to the ultraviolet rays that caused discolouration. If you were ever in a grocery store and heard the PA announcement "Call on 101" or "Call on Line 1", that was a very common use of a Nortel Norstar phone system that had these features. The user could go to any phone on the system (that had appropriate permissions), and dial the park orbit (e.g. 101) if the call was on park, or they could press the appropriate held line to pick a call up (e.g. Line 1).

Because of the complexity and maintenance required for classic Nortel digital phone systems, towards the end of their existence as a company, Nortel gradually tried moving towards the Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) standard. This meant that phones could be connected to the Local Area Network (LAN) and be connected to the compatible telephone system in a more configurable way. Nortel developed systems such as the Business Communications Manager (BCM), that was a hybrid between digital and VoIP telephony, but was still very cumbersome to manage. Nortel never ended up creating a telephone system that was only VoIP-compatible, they resided on having hybrid phone systems that served both digital and VoIP telephones. This contributed to Nortel's demise as a company, because during the early 2000's when VoIP telephony was becoming the standard, Nortel was still far behind with their cumbersome and clunky hardware and software solutions. For example, in order to utilize specific features of Nortel's VoIP phone systems, you would require very expensive license keys, which Nortel called "Keycodes," which could only be purchased from Nortel or an authorized dealer. This process was very unfriendly towards customers and resulted in many customers having to hire expensive telecommunications professionals to service their Nortel VoIP equipment. This created a bad reputation for Nortel, and many new telecommunications companies mainly based on VoIP technology, such as Talkswitch as they had a more customer-friendly approach.

See also

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References

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