IP | PBX | Key | VoIP Telephone Systems

Do you have 7 to 10 lines of business phone service now?  Do you need to add lines? Are you looking to upgrade to digital phone service or PRI?  Do you spend $500 to $5000 per month on communications products and services?  Have your current services been in place for more than 18 months?

Well, it's time to get a price quote.  As a voice and data communications consultant, I work with mid-sized and multi-location organizations throughout the area and offer competitive price quotes for communications products and services, including business phone service. 

Avaya is a leader in Gartner's Unified Communications Magic Quadrant. 

Gartner is an IT research and advisory company. They have nearly 800 analysts on staff , with an average of 12 years experience in their specific field.

The Magic Quadrants present a first step for buyers in reviewing and understanding the vendors they might consider for a specific purchase. Magic Quadrants provide a graphical view of competitive positioning of technology providers.

A PBX is a type of phone system. PBX stands for Private Branch Exchange. It connects the internal telephones within a business to each other, and also connects them to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) outside of the business. 

A PBX is used to efficiently share resources of many different phone numbers and many phone lines within a business. A PBX is typically used in larger environments where employees are located in separate offices. Most telephones in the PBX system have a single, unique per-phone extension number. A receptionist at an attendant console or an automated-attendant receives all incoming calls, which are transferred to the requested extension number.

A PBX will usually connect to the PSTN with ISDN PRI line and DID numbers. An ISDN PRI is essentially one line that is capable of carrying up to 23 phone calls at one time. DID is an acronym for direct-inward-dialing. DID is a service offered by the telephone company. 

DID numbers are purchased in a block of phone numbers and associated with one or more phone lines. DIDs are used to assign a dedicated phone number to each employee, without requiring the purchase of a separate phone line for each employee. In doing this, telephone traffic can be split up and managed more effectively.

POTS is an acronym for Plain Old Telephone Service. POTS, also known as analog phone lines, basic business phone line, and B1 lines,  are individual phone lines that can be used by a business. They are delivered over twisted copper pairs by the local telephone company.

POTS lines may be used as phone lines, elevator lines, alarm panel lines, FAX lines, and credit card terminal lines. With POTS, each business line has its own individual phone number associated with it. POTS can be connected directly to an individual phone handset, KSU-less phone system, Key system, or PBX phone system. If you have a small business, and only need to have a maximum of 8-10 people on the phone at any given time, you probably have POTS lines.

PRI is an acronym for Primary Rate Interface. A PRI is essentially one wire that provides 24 channels, and is capable of carrying up to 23 concurrent phone calls. 

PRI service may also be referred to as a voice T1 or an ISDN PRI, though they are different. The difference between a T1 and PRI in voice lines is that the PRI protocol establishes one channel of the 24 channels as a switching and data channel.  

In techie terms, a PRI consists of 23 B-channels and one D-channel. The D-channel, aka data channel, is used for signaling and providing services like caller-ID. The B-channel is the bearer channel.  B-channels are used for your phone calls. A PRI uses a D-channel for signal, while a T1 doesn’t. So a T1 will support 24 calls at once, while a PRI will support 23. Not all central office switches support PRI.

When you buy a PRI, you also buy a block of DID telephone numbers. The DID numbers may ring the as a dedicated number for the primary phone number of the business, or direct extensions for employees, departments, or fax machines. 

In most situations, PRI is the service that's actually deployed and used by businesses. If your business requires more than 8-10 people to be on the phone at any given time, then you need to look at a PRI for the increased call-handling capacity.