PBX Systems And The Internet
PBX systems (or Private Branch Exchange systems) are business telephone systems that provide telephone services for an enterprise’s internal telephone network. All phone calls made within the enterprise are handled by these systems with shared lines used to make external calls with traditional PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) providers. These systems were first devised in order to save money on internal calls (which did not need to use a traditional phone company’s PSTN network) and initially involved operators connecting callers by manually plugging cables into a physical switchboard.
During the 1990s, the proliferation of ubiquitous data networks and emerging data standards (such as ISDN and Ethernet) significantly increased the functionality of these systems while at the same time making them much more affordable. ISDN, for example, enabled features such as call forwarding, conference calls, programmable caller ID and hot-desking (where a telephone number could be assigned to an arbitrary port). The advent of VoIP, the internet protocol for voice communications, and its use of a standard packet switched data network, enabled full convergence between voice communications and overall data management. Today’s IP-based systems, referred to as IP PBXs, use the internet to transmit calls through VoIP while also being able to use PSTN to connect to traditional telephone company providers.
These developments have meant that voice data can now be integrated into an enterprise’s overall data infrastructure, simplifying the installation and maintenance of PBX systems and providing considerable flexibility and cost savings in the implementation of these networks. An IP PBX server, for example, operates in a similar fashion to any other proxy server on the internet (in this case exchanging voice data).
The SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) standard, used for controlling multimedia communication sessions on the internet, enables any SIP enabled phone hardware to be used in the network and frees an enterprise from being locked to a particular provider and their phone standards.
IP PBX systems are much easier to implement and manage because they utilize a web and GUI interface rather than a proprietary standard. Most VoIP phone systems come with a rich feature set that includes auto attendant, voice mail, ring groups, advanced reporting and even video-conferencing.
VoIP is also significantly less expensive to use for long distance and international calls (because it uses the existing IP network). An IP PBX can, for example, enable an enterprise that has branch offices to easily connect them to their network resulting in much less expensive intra-office calls. They are also highly scalable since there is no physical wiring to worry about; all the enterprise has to do is add additional data capacity or external lines to expand the network.
Today, there is an increasing trend to outsourcing data operations and IP PBXs can be hosted by an external provider in the same way as any other data processing needs. In fact, with virtual hosting, an enterprise can have full administrator control of its PBX system while not having to concern itself with its physical implementation or maintenance.
Modern PBX systems that are implemented using the IP family of standards offer considerable cost savings in the management, maintenance and overall costs associated with an enterprise’s telephone infrastructure
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