While I agree that this is an issue that needs to be addressed by the the vendor of the phone system, it is important to remember that many systems (at least the ones that I work with lately) don't arbitrarily pass * or # in the outward dialing string on an outbound trunk call.

Your mention that it works fine after a five-second timeout pretty much sums this up. Most phone systems allow for CO line ports (trunks) to be configured to ignore standard dialing patterns for this reason. Have them see if they can configure this (these) trunk(s) to be unconditioned.

You might want to double-check the make/model of the phone systems involved here. I don't think that there's anything newly-manufactured with the Nortel brand name out there.

This sounds like more of an issue with the Vertical MBX that Stafford County is buying now.

Ed Vaughn, MBSWWYPBX