I’ve recently retired an old PC that was running my phone system and replaced it with a Grandstream UCM6301 appliance. The PC was 9 years old with a wheezing fan, and was running a pretty outdated version of 3CX.
Because of various licensing changes, and because I prefer to have actual physical phones, to carry on using a current version of 3CX would cost me around £200 per year; not a huge amount, but I’m trying to cut down on recurring fees.
That’s also one reason why I don’t have a cloud based phone system; those tend to charge per month, per device. Another reason is connectivity; I like my gadgets and the front door intercom is a part of the phone system here. I’ve just switched from a voice to a video system, and when someone comes to the door, their image appears on my desk phone. With a cloud system, if the net went down, I’d not be able to call within the home, which strikes me as silly.
So, I want a PBX appliance or small PC. 3CX has ruled itself out on cost grounds. I considered a free software solution, but I’d still have to get hardware to run it on, unless I want that 9 year old PC to wheeze its way into senility. The 6301 is the lowest of the Grandstream UCM63xx range (ignoring the ‘A’ versions, which do audio only, and I want my video intercom).
List price seems to be somewhere around the £380-£400 mark, but I saw a new one on eBay at £300 with a best offer option, so I offered £245 and it was mine.
My phone service has been provided through my ISP for years now, who are a reseller of Gamma Communications. When I moved away from ISDN, this was a simple way of getting an equivalent service delivered over by internet connection. And, importantly for me at the time, there were no monthly fees per number; with an ISDN2 connection, you got ten numbers, and I wanted to keep them all, without breaking the bank. So, I have two channels of Gamma SIP Trunking for my primary phones, billed via my ISP.
The attached PDF explains how I configured the UCM6301 to work as pretty much a drop-in replacement for the 3CX system, at least in networking and SIP trunk terms. I had to reconfigure handsets, as while 3CX lets you get away with two digit extension numbers, the UCM insists on four. That wasn’t too much of a hardship, as I was replacing the main desk phone at the time with a new Fanvil X7C, to work with the door entry system.
I jotted down the notes, as the way Gamma works (using IP addresses rather than the more usual registration ID) is not really catered for in the UCM setup wizard, and I couldn’t find any other guides online.
A word about the network: I have a business DSL line, with a range of fixed IP addresses, and this makes it much more straightforward to set up something like a PBX at home, with a public address and FQDN of its own.
If don’t have this, I’m sure it’s possible, but you may have to do more fiddling around, and if your UCM is already behind some sort of NAT, then you will probably need to run it in the default ‘Switch’ mode. Since I don’t have that sort of network, I can’t help you with that side of things.
