ATA and overhead paging

[bschear]

I have a really old AT&T paging system that we ant to page to with our Call Manager 6.12 system. If I hook it to anport on an ATA I just get dialtone on the overhead paging. If I hook to an FXO port I see the number hit the port with a debug voice dialpeer inout but get a busy signal. This is just with default settings on both port types. Any configuration examples or help out there?

[Rob Huffman]

Hi Brian,

In most cases when using an Overhead paging system you will need some "mid-span" type device especially when replacing a "legacy" PBX type setup. All the Smarts so to speak, in a "legacy" config, are in the Paging Card (Ring detection, Audio Cut-through etc) so the equivalent is to use this Part with an FXS/ATA Port. So you dial the "mid-span" device and it answers and cuts-through the Voice Page to the Overhead system.

Something like this;

http://www.camelectronics.com/botateacmo.html

Hope this helps!

Rob

[bschear]

Thank you. The old paging system I have is a AT&T Pagepac 20. Is that what I would need to interface with that?

[Rob Huffman]

Hi Brian,

Yes, it looks like this would be required. I just had a look for some config docs for the AT&T Pagepac 20 and there isn't too much. This looks like a pretty "old" unit :)

The truth is that it looks like a Paging Amp only, with no interface to answer/bridge a call from the Phone system. The Part I linked earlier (TAM-B) should fit your needs here.

Cheers!

Rob