Class5 and Toshiba Telephone Systems

Class5’s journey with Toshiba phone systems starts back in the early 80’s when the original owner of Northwest Communications had left working for the local LEC and branched out on his own. Having worked with Toshiba phone systems previously it made sense to work with what he knew. He knew Toshiba systems and Nortel systems. The local phone company had installed many Toshiba systems with business clients all over the Columbia Gorge. This created an existing client base to work with. During the 80’s and 90’s Northwest Communications installed, maintained, and upgraded Toshiba Strata DK systems of all sizes and shapes. Starting with the Strata DK24, DK56, DK96, and the DK280. Then later their upgrades or physical replacements with the Strata DK8, DK16, DK16e, DK40 and DK40i variation, DK424 and its variation the DK424i. When the business was purchased in 2005, we were installing refurbished Strata DK16, DK40, and DK424’s depending on the size of the customers business. With new ownership and a new business name of NW Communication Systems, Inc we became a certified Toshiba dealer in 2006 and gained much needed training and support. That was just in time for the transition from the Strata DK series to the Strata CTX and then CIX series Toshiba telephone systems.

Before becoming a dealer, we had to carry milk cartons full of manuals unique to each phone system. There was only one way to program the small systems and 2 ways to program the larger Strata DK424’s. Most systems we programmed by using a 20-button phone and by using the manuals knowing what feature and function each buttons light, on or off, controlled. Within the screen we would need to know what of dozens of “loads” we were in to know how the buttons should react and control. At first it was daunting, but after awhile it became embedded in the technicians’ minds. Most phone and button programming was straight forward. However, PRI trunk programming was tedious and easily prone to mistakes. With the Strata DK424 Toshiba telephone system, a card option gave us a DOS based program that allowed us to program the phone system on our laptops. This was hugely helpful with Trunk programming. However, over time we learned that you shouldn’t program a system with both methods as they could, and sometimes did, cause data corruption. Other than this, the Toshiba Strata series of phone systems proved solid and dependable. Most of our work was made up of your standard MAC (Moves Adds and Changes), and very little Break Fix work. It made us feel good as technicians to be providing a product to clients that didn’t cost them enormous amounts of money just to keep their phone systems running. They generally only spent when they wanted to make updates or expand.

The advent of the IPedge Toshiba Voip System

Next came the inevitable creation of the IPedge all IP Toshiba phone system. Toshiba successfully ported all their functionality from their Unix based DK/CTX/CIX core to a new Linux based system. The programming was almost identical between the systems. This really helped us as technicians to adopt the new IPedge platform. In fact, both systems supported SIP trunks, VOIP phones, etc. in the exact same ways making migrations or even hybrid systems possible. However, the first 1.0 software versions were extremely buggy, and we waited until the 2.0 versions before selling and installing them for business clients. Which each subsequent software update they because markedly more stable.

During this time NW Communications looked to expand and grow its offerings for its business clients. We changed our name to Class5, an homage to the Class 5 rated carrier telecommunication PBX’s the Bells use around the country. As Class5 we purchased our own large IPedge with 200 IP5000 series full screen phones to create our own hosted phone service for our business clients. Our first hosted clients were in the Movie and Television industry. We setup 40 phones and the infrastructure for it in a single day for the Movie “Wild” starring Reese Witherspoon. The core system had only been up for about a week but provided perfect call quality and the basic features the staff needed. That led to years of other Movie and Television service with that system.

With the IPedge Toshiba phone system we were now able to run pure IP phone systems on hardware platforms provided by Toshiba or run on our clients own Windows or VMware virtual platforms. This flexibility was great for our clients. It opened the door to Unified Communications for our clients. Now they could run Cell Phone Apps and Desktop apps that would allow secure chat between each other. Clients could get internal office calls while driving down the road. Support staff could work from home during inclement weather events. We as a company were now providing our own dial tone with SIP Trunks and these worked perfectly with the IPedge systems. Now clients really could drop simple IP systems with everything pre-programmed into their networks and it would just work.

Unfortunately, in March of 2017 Dealers like ourselves were blindsided with the notice the Toshiba Telecommunications System Division (TSD) would be shutting down their operations. The Toshiba TSD division was profitable but needed much more investment to compete in the upcoming VOIP software wars that were to come, and they were having a massive financial upheaval within the conglomerate as a whole. Assets were sold to Mitel later that year to continue support and some level of hardware sales would continue for a few years before being shut down permanently.