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
Posts Tagged ‘Voip Pbx’
VoIP vs PBX – VoIP is Winning the Battle
March 23rd, 2010VoIP Phone Systems – There’s a Fly in the Ointment
February 14th, 2010
The keystone that will lock in VoIP as the successor to TDM technology has yet to be hefted into place. It may in fact take another decade before we see the full potential of VoIP phone systems. The keystone we are referring to is the deployment of standards based IP infrastructure by the public carriers.
VoIP phone systems are seemingly ubiquitous. Sexy new VoIP PBX systems and VoIP business solutions are announced almost every day. The technology is credible and past issues including voice quality have been sorted out. What’s the catch?
The catch is that the benefits realized by users of VoIP business phone systems relate mainly to internal communication. Organizations with distributed national and international operations gain the most from implementing VoIP phone systems. They achieve savings because their internal communication doesn’t go via PSTNs and they achieve significant savings as a consequence. Conversely, organizations that don’t have remote operations, work from home employees or a mobile workforce need to be far more creative in making a business case to justify a VoIP deployment.
The greatest pain for business is associated with external not internal communication. Most businesses have more customers than employees. To service, retain and acquire them a business must make an increasing volume of external phone calls. As most VoIP services interoperate via PSTNs employing TDM technology they are not using end-to-end VoIP services. Before that can happen the carriers must upgrade their infrastructure from TDM to VoIP technology.
Are the carriers about to upgrade their infrastructure any time soon? It’s unlikely. Collectively Tier 1 carriers have an enormous sunken investment in Class 4 and 5 switches. They work just fine and will probably continue to work for at least another decade. No matter how cheap the replacement VoIP gear, its more expensive than hardware that’s already installed and on the balance sheet.
Tier 1 carriers also have an investment in existing business models. These models are based on using TDM infrastructure not packets of data. Change is inevitable, but it always involves risk. The carriers have demonstrated time and again that they are risk averse, at least when it comes to tinkering with their main source of revenue. It’s been a topic of discussion for more than a decade, but there’s little evidence of change.
It’s also significant that there is little or no agreement on standards for carrier VoIP. There are even differences between carriers on how they handle SIP trunking and Caller ID. In the absence of enforceable standards between carriers there is little prospect of reliable VoIP peering between carriers any time soon.
For now and the immediate future, enterprise users of VoIP phone systems must reconcile themselves to enjoying less than fifty percent of the potential upside available from their VoIP business solutions. At some point the carriers will replace their infrastructure and agree on standards for IP-based carrier services, but it may take the entrance of a new breed of carrier before that comes to pass.
By: Chris H Green
