I’ve come across Inter-Tel’s Axxess range of phone systems over the last few years in my “day job” as a consultant and freelance software developer. The Axxess is what you’d call a “traditional” PBX – a chassis-based PBX that you slot feature cards into, of which the VoIP option (the “IPRC” card, as they call it) is just one. The CS-5000’s takes a different tack, though, with the emphasis firmly on VoIP at the core.

The CS-5200 is a blue 1U box with a small LCD display on the front alongside some buttons that let you do some basic functions like setting the device’s IP address or rebooting it. There’s also a socket where you insert a RAM card that acts as the voicemail repository. On the back of the unit are a pair of analogue RJ-45s; one drives a pair of analogue trunks (ie you can connect it to a pair of analogue phone lines as your external service) and the other a pair of analogue extensions (so you can hang a couple of traditional phones, or more likely modems/fax machines, off the unit).

Obviously you’ll need to break out each individual RJ-45 into two sockets on your patch panel, but that’s a simple cabling job. Next to this are the interfaces for paging services and music-on-hold, and then you have the slot for the processor card (which has an Ethernet interface for connecting to your LAN).

You then have three slots into which you can put trunk cards; each card can handle a pair of ISDN2s (i.e. four channels) or a single ISDN30, though there’s a dual ISDN30 module due for launch shortly. Oh, and if you need more analogue extensions, you can put a four-port analogue module in one of the slots. Oh, and the unit comes with a built-in 4-channel voicemail (i.e. four calls can be talking to the voicemail memory at once) and a simple licence change ups this to eight channels. There’s also built-in CTI capability via the OAI protocol.

The CS-5200 supports up to 75 IP endpoints (ie handsets). The "up to" bit needs a bit of clarification, though. When you connect an IP phone, you can set it to use either G.711 or G.729 signalling.

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