BT Ambassador

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The BT Ambassador is an old private telephone switchboard made for BT by General Electric. It was discontinued in 1991. There was a larger version called the Senator. Both used their own phones, gave direct access to outside lines with indicator lights, had an internal intercom, and could do basic call forwarding. Besides these features, they were fairly simple and are now obsolete. The Ambassador could handle either 1 line with 3 extensions or 2 lines with 4 extensions; the Senator could manage up to 5 lines and 10 extensions, depending on the control unit setup. Used Ambassador and Senator gear can still be bought on the second-hand market in the UK. Today, they can provide simple home intercoms but aren’t very useful for modern offices because they lack features and don’t interoperate well.