PBX stands for Private Branch Exchange, and is a private telephone system that historically businesses owned, operated and maintained themselves on premises. Historically, this was a very popular form of telecoms for businesses. However, with advances in technology, this now may not be the most cost effective way to host your telecoms systems.
How PBX works
PBX traditionally houses all equipment on-site, such as lines and phones. It allows a business to operate several lines and extensions through each telephone system, meaning that its not necessary to have the same ratio of phone lines to employees and handsets. Its core functionality includes voicemail options, ability to conduct conference calls, line extensions and call records.
As all equipment is hosted on-site, PBX is associated with high start-up costs and the business itself must appoint a dedicated personnel to be in charge of operating, managing and maintaining the equipment.
How hosted telephony works
Hosted telephony uses cloud technology to house your phone system. It removes the need for costly on-site equipment and hardware and instead the business phone system is hosted remotely and connected to via the Internet.
The remote location is known as a Hosted PBX and can be accessed through leased lines. Once it’s installed, it can be easily managed and additional features can easily be added to suit your business needs.
Discover more by reading our telecoms guide and FAQs here.
Is PBX cost effective in 2019?
Whilst PBX has historically been a very popular method for business communications (especially within large business organisations), it is now not the most up-to-date, efficient method of housing telecoms.
There are several things to consider when looking at whether PBX is the most cost effective way of hosting your business telecoms:
1. Difficult to scale
Adding new phone lines is complicated and can cause delays. Whereas with Hosted Telephony, scalability is quick and simple and low cost.
2. Cost
There are high start-up costs that come along with PBX, due to the amount of equipment that has to be housed on-site. Further to this, there are costs to making calls – usually pence per minute – whereas with hosted usually calls are free and there are call packages available for external calls.
3. Limited features
Newer technology gives businesses much more capability with their phone systems. For example, features such as voicemail to email or direct to mobile are available with our Hosted Telephony contracts. As PBX is older technology, these options are not as readily available and could mean that you miss out on valuable calls.
4. Disaster recovery
With everything housed on-site, if there is some kind of disaster, such as a flood or an electrical failure, this could mean that your telecoms are down for a long period of time. However, with hosted telephony, call routing plans can be preset and activated using any internet enabled device, by users and company administrators, so you never lose a call.
Benefit from our services
We are able to offer a full telecoms review of your business and assess exactly what type of phone system is best for you. Contact us on 01256 391046 and we can help advise you on the best communication tools for your business.