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GTE Automatic Electric designed the OMNI digital PABX starting in 1982, assisted by ATEA for the international market requirements.
One of the options was a really integrated voice/data feature phone, designed in Chicago, but manufactured in a plant in Genoa, Illinois.
In 1986 , GTE sold his PABX department in the US to FBCS (Fujitsu Business Communication Systems) , and ATEA was sold to Siemens. Either FBCS and ATEA were still obtaining the GTE feature phone from Genoa, Illinois.
In 1989, the Genoa plant decided to discontinue manufacturing the GTE feature phone. FBCS and ATEA had the same problem, they still wanted to deliver feature phones with the OMNI PABX. They decided to join forces and interface a Fujitsu feature phone to the OMNI.
Hardware design of the interface card to the OMNI should be done in Belgium, and software design should be done at FBCS in Chicago. Therefore, 3 ATEA engineers (among them: me) were sent to Chicago to assist the software design. I was also some kind of liason officer between the two development teams at both sides of the ocean.
After 6 months my management decided to quit the project, and start the project over with a Siemens feature phone. So we had to leave early and start a new design in Belgium.
In 1989 ATEA purchased a couple of these Fujitsu feature phones for prototyping. Finally our participation in this project was cancelled before we even started testing in Belgium. Two years later, the phones were discarded, but I confiscated one for "emotional reasons".
Last changed on 29/05/11 by Jan