Asterisk: The Future of Telephony, 2nd Edition

Massive Change Requires Flexible Technology

The most successful key telephone system in the world has a design limitation that has survived 15 years of users begging for what appears to be a simple change: when you determine the number of times your phone will ring before it forwards to voicemail, you can choose from 2, 3, 4, 6, or 10 ring cycles. Have you any idea how many times people ask for five rings? Plead as the customers might, the manufacturers of this system cannot get their head around the idea that this is a problem. That’s the way it works, they say, and users need to get over it.

Another example from the same system is that the name you program on your set can only be seven characters in length.^[7] Back in the late 1980s, when this particular system was designed, RAM was very expensive, and storing those seven characters for dozens of sets represented a huge hardware expense. So what’s the excuse today? None. Are there any plans to change it? Hardly—the issue is not even officially acknowledged as a problem.

Those are just two examples; the industry is rife with them.

Now, it’s all very well and good to pick on one system, but the reality is that every PBX in existence suffers shortcomings. No matter how fully featured it is, something will always be left out, because even the most feature-rich PBX will always fail to anticipate the creativity of the customer. A small group of users will desire an odd little feature that the design team either did not think of or could ...