Mass notification via Page groups?

[JoeShmo]

So we have been asked what the MCD can do for mass notification.  The first thing that came to mind was Paging.  However, according to the documentation (we're running 5.0 on virtual MCDs), we can only have 64 IP phones in a page group.  Is there a way around this?  Like some sort of cascading where a member of one group is actually a group number for another group?
We have approx 400 IP phones (model 5330) that university police may want to send a page to.  I could probably make a pile of groups that were per-building based, then they would have to do each building one at a time, but at least its something.
I see that "the number of IP phones in a page group is limited to 50% of the available E2T channels", not sure how many channels are on a virtual MCD setup (I guess the same as MCD-ISS), or if theres a way to increase them.
Any suggestions?

[x-man]

Mitel sell the Blazecast system for this scenario. Overcomes the page group limit.

[acejavelin]

Mitel sell the Blazecast system for this scenario. Overcomes the page group limit.

^^^ This is your only option for over 64 phones to be paged as a single group.

This topic has been discussed many times, the 64 phone limit cannot be exceeded with any "trickery" in the 3300...

[ralph]

Here's a link for the blazecast brochures

www.benbria.com/documents

Ralph

[lowradiation]

Benbria no longer supports the Mitel set paging feature
I have attached a product notice pdf from June 8, 2011

[ghost]

I have been investigating auto diallers for sending out reminders to customers.

I could see using something like an auto dialer to call all the paging groups in one go with the same message (give it enough lines to call the required number of pages groups to cover all your phones.)
With the solutions I was looking at you could either have a set of pre-recorded message, or you could setup an ivr you call in, record a new message then tell it to broadcast.

[ralph]

Major bummer.   Didn't know it was discontinued.

Ralph

[JoeShmo]

Well, nice that its been discontinued, as I no longer need to find an excuse not to get it.  It had heaps of overkill with heaps of costs, and yet another external system to try to tie into.  Yet another feature that should have been programmed into the Mitel itself.  I wonder if its any easier over in the FreeSwitch/CudaTel world...

[jveilleux]

There are also service bureau options you can use for not a ton of money.  For example www.hyper-reach.com.