Making my own POTS lines

Check out the Asterisk PBX system at

You take just about any old PC, add the free software, mix in a few hardware boards to support the type of lines you need, and you are good to go.

essenz> Now, I can easily get a single Voice T1 PRI. With that, and the essenz> appropriate equipment, can I utilize that PRI to sort of create essenz> my own POTS lines that will be compatible with modems and essenz> faxing? Would a PBX still be required, or could it all be done essenz> out of a single cisco or adtran device?

You can connect a channel bank to the PRI and have it route each B-channel to a pots line. You shouldn't need a pbx.

That should be the most reliable option.

Some channel banks can pass part of the PRI on to a downstream T1, in addition to driving the analog (pots) line cards, should you require fewer than 23 pots lines and have any use for digital lines as well.

-JimC

A PRI needs to plug into a PBX or something like it in order to do the call management. If you just want some POTS lines, see if you can instead get a channelized T1, which is physically the same as a PRI but without the ISDN smarts, just one logical phone line per channel. Then all you need is a channel bank to break out those lines to analog ports. Poking around on the net I see some great deals on T1 channel banks, some under $200.

You can get PRI channel banks, but they're not cheap. The Adtran 550, for example, with analog channel cards costs over $3000.

With respect to the other suggestion to run Asterisk on an old PC, you could easily make that work but to get your analog ports you would have to buy port cards that typically cost upwards of $100/port.