Ericsson Md110 and Mx-One
The traditional PBX
The Ericsson Md110 has been around for a significant amount of time, and at one point had one of the largest market shares of the PBX sector. It's modular design, reliability and ability to interwork with many other systems and services meant it was the perfect enterprise telephony solution. In the late 1990s Ericsson sold it's PBX business to Canadian firm, Aastra. Aastra carried on the development of the platform under the MX-One model designation, converting it to a Linux server based architecture and native SIP operability, giving a perfect migration path from the old digital platform. Aastra was ultimately bought by Mitel, but the platform was so strong they continued with it as a large enterprise telephony solution. To this day there are still Md110 platforms that are quietly chugging away providing telephony services to businesses around the globe.
Maintenance
One of the requirements of an on-premises telephone system is that it needs to be looked after. In a hosted environment this all takes part behind the scenes, but when it's physically in your office building you are responsible for it. Simple things from adds, moves and changes, to replacement parts, additional line cards and complex fault finding, need to be carried out by an engineer. In some cases this can be done remotely through a modem connection or a VPN, in other cases a site visit may be required. Although the Md110 and MX-One are incredibly reliable, some of the older systems will start to suffer from hardware failure.
What do we offer?
We have been working with the Md110 and MX-One platforms for nearly 25 years. If you need to discuss your system, the options for the future, or just to provide some ad-hoc support, we can help you! There aren't very many Ericsson equipment maintainers left, and most of them won't look at older versions. But, we will. We can't guarantee we can keep them running forever, but we can help you work out a strategy for replacement, and provide maintenance cover in the interim.
Planned Replacements
Replacing a telephone system is a complicated process, capturing your current setup is key to ensuring a smooth transition, regardless of the platform you are moving to. We offer all of our Ericsson/Aastra Md110/MX-One customers interim support, data collection and verification, and migration support.
Maritime and Marine Communications
The reliability and robust build practise of the Md110 meant that it was ideal for use in the maritime and marine environments. It has been installed on everything from cruise ships to aircraft carriers and in most cases is still there! We offer global support for these systems, including "drop-in" engineers that will attend wherever the ship happens to be. As a safety critical system on board any vessel, it's important to have expertise at hand should problems arise.
Case Study
Supporting 1800 extensions on a cruise ship
There are many reasons why these old systems are kept running. Mostly it's down to cost, and on some of these big systems the cost of change can be astronomical.
If you've already got a proven, reliable, best of breed PBX system that does EVERYTHING you need it to do, why change?
Parts are readily available through second user and refurbished channels, so all that's needed is the knowledge.
We were approached by a partner organisation to provide engineering resource and support for the Md110 on board a cruise ship. With over 10 decks, 700 cabins, 1400 passengers and 600 staff, this is a big system. 1800+ telephone extensions on a single PBX.
With modern satellite links we are able to access the system remotely whenever a fault is reported, check out the health of the system and plan any service requirements for when it's next in port.
Working closely with the ships engineers on-board, we can advise of steps to be taken during a fault and talk them through necessary actions whilst at sea.
At some point this old Ericsson Md110 will need to be replaced, probably at the ship's next major refurbushment. In the meantime, Litenet will be looking after it.
