What is a PBX solution?

It’s a term that’s used fairly frequently, but are you confident you know exactly what a private branch exchange or PBX telephone system really is?

Essentially, it’s a business telephony solution switching calls between members of an organisation on local lines, while letting all users share a certain number of outside telephone lines.

The key purpose of a system like this is to save the cost of need a separate line into the phone company’s central office for each user.

The organisation owns and runs the PBX rather than the phone company, and today’s systems use digital rather than an analogue technology.

A PBX includes:

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Multiple trunk lines terminating at the PBX
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A computer plus memory to manage call switching within and outside the PBX
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An optional switchboard or console for the use of a human operator
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The network of lines within the PBX

If your business is still using a traditional PBX solution, you’re not enjoying enhanced efficiency and communication capabilities which could be available by making the move to a hosted solution.

How is a hosted solution different?

With hosted telephony, the system is hosted in the cloud rather than on-site. It is accessed via a softphone or IP handset.

If you’ve not heard of them before, softphones are screen-based virtual phones that you use with a headset. Calls can be made via a broadband connection, before being routed to PTSN fixed and mobile devices.

Switching from PBX to hosted telephony means the end of costly maintenance and upgrades – and all hardware and software maintenance and upgrades are done for you.

With hosted services, disaster recovery and business continuity come as standard, while you’ll also enjoy outstanding voice quality and be able to let your staff work flexibly wherever they want.

So it’s perhaps not surprising that one 2017 survey of more than 400 UK companies found that a mere 2% made no use of cloud-based services at all.

Need more information? Talk to us about your business telephony now.