Meridian Norstar
In 1988, Nortel developed the Meridian Norstar system. The Norstar went on to be one of the leading telephone systems in the world. It is visible worldwide with installations at major retail chains, educational environments, medical institutions, government facilities, and many places where key telephone systems are required
The Meridian Norstar system went further than the other systems in similarity to a PBX system such as the Meridian 1system developed in the late 1980s as well. This allowed blurring the distinction of key telephone system versus PBX telephone system. Many features such as Direct Inward Dial, and Call Accounting were designed off the larger Meridian 1 PBX,
Although there were many hardware/design similarities between the Meridian Norstar systems and larger Meridian 1, the telephones themselves could not be used interchangeably between the key system and PBX. They were, however, backwards compatible on their respective switch. That is, you can use the oldest Meridian M7000 telephones on the newest (BCM) Business Communication Manager system. You can also use the latest T7000 series telephones on an older Norstar system such as the DR5.1. This allows companies to invest in hardware as needed
Newer Nortel T7316 Telephone which is compatible with new BCM or all older Meridian Norstar systems. When introduced in 1988, Norstar telephones were developed with highly advanced features. The telephones came with Liquid Crystal Displays, heavy duty handsets/telephone body, colour coded keys with easy to read fonts, grey, beige and black colours, a high quality speaker phone, quick reference card located underneath the handset, high clarity handset voice quality, and a very rugged solid telephone.
As with other Nortel telephones, the phones contained a clearly defined colour coded red Hold key, orange Release (RLS) key and a grey Feature key. RLS allows hanging up a call without having to depress the handset cradle. During loudspeaker paging announcements with the telephone, the RLS key releases silently. This is very useful in large retail stores where paging announcements are frequent.
The Feature key allows accessing many system features with one single Feature Code. For example, dial Feature 70 to transfer, as opposed to complex feature codes on older Meridian Norstar systems.
