PBX phone systems were the standard in recent years. These were needed to handle the huge telephony needs of big business. But a PBX is expensive, high

maintenance, and difficult to upgrade when the company needs change.

With the ubiquitous Internet availability, businesses of all sizes have another option for their demanding telephony needs. This is a VoIP system.

What is VoIP?

VoIP is the acronym for “Voice Over Internet Protocol.”

Protocols are the policies for how all things related to the Internet should work. These rules are in place to make sure that people around the globe are working with

the same rules which will help the Internet work best.

So, VoIP is the international standards for how the human voice can be transmitted over the Internet.

Traditional Communications

Consider the fixed landline in your home. Your home phone has a physical wire which is connected to a local telephone pole. That wire then connects to a group of

others at the telephone company’s central office. And finally, the utility has lines to all of their other central offices where lines exist.

When call from your home, the utility sends your call over the lines to the line of the person you are calling using the central office locations.

To make this happen, the phone company uses a Public Switched Telephone Network, or PSTN. This process uses dedicated lines and is relatively costly because of the

need for all of the physical wiring and equipment.

PBX System

An office business has physical lines which come into the building from the utility company, and then physical lines which connect each phone within the building to the

main wired control panel as well.

Traditionally, the business’ PBX or “Private Branch Exchange” would route the calls that come into the building for the different extensions in the system.

While this set up is certainly effective and has its place in certain operations, a small business owner may consider this larger system more complicated to administer.

In addition, PBX is often cost prohibitive for medium or small businesses to purchase, leaving a small business owner without many options.

VoIP Phone Systems

Many offices of all sizes are now moving away from PBX, and embracing VoIP technology.

Businesses can use this newer technology to address their telephony needs with ease of administration, the relatively easy ability to upgrade their systems, as well as

the number one advantage … reduced costs.

This advanced technology allow large, medium, and small business communication to operate over their existing data network.

Where in the past, each phone and each computer had to have its own line to connect to the central network of the building, now only one is necessary.

Just as your computer sends out digital data over the corporate Ethernet network, your voice over IP phone can turn your voice into digital data and send it the same

way and over the same cable.

Also, when wireless networks are available, the transmissions can use the wireless network as well. Cellular phones are one example of this wireless technology.

When you look at VoIP vs. PBX, it is easy to see that VoIP is the technology being adopted now, and large PBX systems are an effective traditional communications

method, but a cumbersome one.

Just as how, fax machines were the way to pass documents from one location to another, but now, we use e-mail … PBX has been the way to route calls but now

VoIP is taking over our telephony needs.

By: Andrew Stratton