Norstar owners - the Clock is Ticking!

During the preceding two decades, Nortel (aka: Northern Telecom during the early 90′s) made some of the best business phone systems in the world. Many of you readers may still own Nortel phone systems. For those of you who don’t know, in 2009 Nortel fell into financial trouble because of some mis-managment at the top (similar to Enron or Worldcom). They were forced to sell their three major business units.

Nortel’s phone system unit was sold to Avaya. Avaya has discontinued support for many of the Nortel products – especially the popular NORSTAR series phone systems.

The popular refrain I hear from Norstar owners is “hey, it works great, why fix it if ain’t broke?”. Yes, I would agree. However, keep in mind that as these Norstar systems continue to age a few things become more worrisome.

1. The memory that holds the programming data (set numbers, ringing configurations, etc) is vulnerable to loss because the small battery inside the system wears out and no longer can hold the memory during a brief power outages.

2. Qualified technicians become more rare. Since most techs are out in the field installing the latest new equipment, they’re not seeing many Norstars anymore. And, old-timers, more familiar with Norstar, have since moved-on or been promoted to managers.

3. Parts become harder to find. This is a bit of a paradox as any quick search on eBay would seem to contradict what I just stated. As far as finding phone sets and pbx modules – it’s true, the used market is abound with them right now. However, specialty items such as particular software, voice mail hard/flash drives are not in as ready abundance.

What’s the best way to deal with this? The quick, easy, and most affordable way is to get a backup done and be sure your system is surge and lightning protected. Most *Good* techs who have the right equipment can perform a backup in less than 2 hours. Once you have a backup, it can be restored in about an hour. This is a better alternative that having to have the system re-programmed from scratch (which could take the better part of a day!)
Surge and Lightning protection should be less than $200 USD plus about an hour of install time.

Another approach, is creating what is known as a “Crash Kit”. This a collection of parts you would purchases (used) and keep on-hand in the event of a system failure. For most medium-sized Nortels (20-50 users), a Crash kit would probably be less than $1000 USD.

Finally, the ultimate and eventual path is to plan the upgrade to a new Business Phone system. The best time to do that planning is while the system you own is still running well.