Panasonic left the PBX market. The systems are still on site.
Panasonic announced the discontinuation of its Business Communication line — PBX, SIP and scanner categories — in late 2020, completing the exit by early 2023. Australian sites are still running those systems years later, without new hardware, development or a forward path.
A working phone system is easy to defer.
Panasonic KX systems were reliable, which is exactly why so many are still running. The cost of deferring shows up somewhere other than call quality: in what the platform cannot do, and in what happens when a card fails.
- No new features or development on a discontinued platform
- New hardware no longer available through the channel
- Spares and replacement cards sourced from the secondary market
- Remote working handled through port forwarding and NAT rather than a managed tunnel
- Separate softphone applications that do not share data
- No hotel PMS, Microsoft Teams or API integration path
The trigger is usually external.
Most Panasonic replacements in Australia are prompted by something else — an office move, a carrier change, an ISDN or analogue service withdrawal, or a failure with no available part. The design is better made before one of those sets the timeline.
Where a P-Series replacement lands differently.
Both platforms handle multiple calls, point-and-click operation, click-to-call via CTI, and drag-and-drop transfer, forward, park and retrieve. The rows below are where the replacement changes what the site can do.
| Capability | Panasonic | Yeastar P-Series |
|---|---|---|
| Softphone clients | Three independent systems that do not sync data with each other. | One Linkus client family across web, mobile and desktop. |
| Softphone installation | UC Pro requires additional server installation per user. | Installed by download. |
| Online meetings | No online meeting feature. | Web-based meetings built into the system, with screen sharing and in-meeting chat. |
| Operator panel | Requires a Communication Assistant server to expand users, licensed separately. | Built into the PBX, enabled per extension by permission. |
| Operator and softphone interaction | Operator console does not interact with the softphone clients. | Click-to-call from the Linkus web and desktop clients. |
| Call centre reporting | Basic call queue and call report only. | Advanced queue and reporting, with wallboard and queue panel. |
| Remote working | Requires a purchased public IP, router port forwarding and NAT configuration. | Managed secure tunnelling without port forwarding or NAT configuration. |
| IP phone provisioning | PBX IP entered manually on each handset. | Bulk auto-provisioning from the web interface. |
| Third-party IP phones and intercoms | Limited interoperability. | Broad interoperability across brands. |
| Hotel PMS integration | Not supported. | Supported, with Oracle Validated Integration. |
| Microsoft Teams | Not supported. | Supported. |
| API | Not supported. | Supported. |
| Licensing | Separate licences and pricing models per feature. | Subscription plans covering feature sets. |
Comparison drawn from Yeastar’s published competitive material. Competitor capabilities change; confirm the current position with the vendor before relying on any line of this comparison in a customer proposal.
A discontinued platform is a book of work, not a problem.
If you maintain Panasonic sites, you are already the incumbent on a base with no vendor future. The opportunity is to sequence those sites deliberately rather than replacing them one emergency at a time.
Where partners use us most
- Reviewing the base and sequencing replacements
- Sizing the Yeastar edition and plan per site
- Handling analogue and legacy connectivity
- Acceptance, fallback and hypercare per cutover
- Provisioning and escalation through the programme
Replace the Panasonic base on your timeline, not a failure’s.
Bring TeraFi the site list, the user counts and the connectivity position. We will help set the order and the first validation step.
Fact-checked on 22 September 2026 against Yeastar’s Panasonic comparison material, which is dated 2022. Panasonic product and support positions should be confirmed against Panasonic’s own current statements. Comparison drawn from Yeastar’s published competitive material. Competitor capabilities change; confirm the current position with the vendor before relying on any line of this comparison in a customer proposal.