Asterisk Voip Hosted PBX

If you have or lead a company and would like to use VoIP in order to be competitive, you may research some info on the internet about VoIP and find a few strange phrases, for example, PBX or asterisk VoIP hosted PBX. In this short article I would like to help you to learn a bit about PBX.

First of all, what is PBX? Private branch exchange. Before VoIP, PBX was the mainframe of corporate telephony. KTS, what means key telephone system, is a small version of PBX.

PBXs deliver so much value, such as:

• PBX can use dedicated high-bandwidth lines out to the carrier or to other locations on the company’s network.
• Interfaces can be used on PBX to provide full-motion videoconferencing.
• PBX has extensive call-management capabilities and the capacity for setting up and controlling multiple call centers.
• PBX can usually be upgraded to operate with VoIP. As a result, you can save money because you do not have to get rid of your PBX to go to VoIP.

As with KTS, companies using PBX can reduce the total number of POTS lines required by a factor of one line for every six to eight employees. But unlike KTS, PBX has the capacity for unlimited expansion. The largest workable KTS is limited to about sixty POTS lines; with PBX, you can have thousands of lines.
The PBX system’s circuitry integrates multiple users over fewer lines at a single location and can also connect to all other locations.

If your company has multiple locations, with each site having its own PBX, you can connect them all using a separate network, but the cost of maintaining a separate network is huge. If you have a great deal of recurring charges, the multilocation design for connecting all your PBXs can save your company big time. The recurring costs have to be leveraged against the costs of an entirely separate network. (VoIP runs over your computer network and does not require a separate PBX network.)

The PBX model provides great savings when compared to the other models, but it doesn’t give you anything close to the savings attainable through VoIP. VoIP all but eliminates services charges for all on-net calls. VoIP reduces carrier services charges significantly for calls that travel off-net. For many large multilocation companies, these charges alone amount to millions of dollars per month.