Occasionally I may spend too much time looking through the endless selection of marketplace items that the local community is selling. Quite often I just look through the listings and occasionally I come across a bargain too hard to pass up.

In this case I came across a VoIP PBX Telephone System – Now, in saying that you’re likely thinking what are you going to do with a PBX? Well, the thing is it was so much more than that, there was included for the price of $75 AUD was a Grandstream UCM6102 PBX, D-Link 8-Port PoE Switch (Managed), 3 x GrandStream Telephone handsets and a MikroTik RouterBoard! Lots of value to me and an almost endless amount of ways I could test and configure this type of equipment.

I also thought I could justify the $75 in knowing I could easily likely fetch $50 for the MitroTik Router itself if I wanted to re-coop costs. I also thought of testing this as a replacement PBX for my church’s phone system – For which I maintain. The solution was this Grandstream UCM, everything else to me was a bonus.

Below is a picture of what I purchased from a business that was selling the system.

I suppose, why the price of the system was so little was because unless you know what it is – you’re not going to buy it and be honest – How many people are looking through Facebook Marketplace for a VoIP Business PBX Phonesystem? Not many in a small town.

So how did I go with getting this all going? Well actually, I already have a VoIP phone number through my current internet provider, it was a number that I had from when I was in business – So, hadn’t released it as it was included in the price of my internet package. So, I had a number I could configure as two-line trunk. I also have an account with CheapVoip.com that I use to make cheap calls to almost any country in the world.

So, I reset the PBX, Switch and phones after picking them up. In getting into the configurations I found the UCM was on an old Firmware. So, I downloaded the latest available which gave it a really awesome face-lift – That has pretty much brought it in line with the newer GrandStream UCM6202 PBX.

The functionality of the PBX has so far proved useful and too date, I’ve been able to configure a desk phone, 2 phones for my shed and a fourth cordless Panasonic TGP600. I even managed to configure a fax-line over VoIP and have sent a few test faxes.

Well, that’s about it, I’m yet to play with the MikroTik but I’m sure I’ll get there one day.

Happy bargain shopping!