Confused about "SIP account" versus "line"

[engin411]

Trying to understand the details of a VOIP system. Our old system operated on the notion of "lines"; we have 4 POTS lines from the street that directly correlate to the 4 physical buttons on our phones.

Now, I'm shopping for IP phones that can handle 6 calls (upgrade from the current 4 calls) and some say "6 lines" and some say "6 SIP accounts".

What's the difference?

 

[leejor]

Some of the SIP phones that I have used allow each line key to be registered to a different provider, different SIP server address. A Mitel and a Nortel did not. If the set only allowed one SIP server address, yet multiple extensions numbers, from that single provider, and some sets might do that, especially ones originally designed to work with their own PBX, then that might be a set that had multiple lines versus SIP accounts. You might have to examine the manual programming, to determine which is which. Or get an opinion from the forum.

 

[jpillow]

Leejor is absolutely correct, you can program each account to work with a different SIP provider or even a different PBX if that secnario comes into play. Where as on your analog pbxs line line one is just that a line with a phone number assigned to it, and that key is assigned to that line. Where as the account can be a different SIP provider or pbx, i generally assign acccount two on clients phones as an extension when testing their pbx.