Telephone Communication Systems
Why should you consider an IP PBX
Any IP telephony setup that is for more than two or three lines needs a switching system to make it more efficient, allow internal calling and switching between users and to provide more advanced features like voicemail, call forwarding, call hold, conferencing and more. Typically IP PBX systems become economically sensible with as few as 5 users and a good rule of thumb is that if you want an IP telephony system with extensions for your users than you will want an IP PBX.
In addition, market and analyst estimates show that there is a rapid migration to IP telephony underway because of cost, efficiency and performance advantages. Any organization, even a small one that migrates to VoIP or IP telephony will need an IP PBX system. In the past PBX systems for organizations and enterprises cost so much that only large enterprises could afford to make use of them, but recent technological advances and pressure from open source solutions has brought the cost of IP PBX systems down to as low as well under £1000.
There are dozens of IP PBX systems and most of them can do an adequate job. Regardless of the size of your organization, any IP PBX should be able to do the following:
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Automated attendant-an automatic system to answer phones with the ability to build phone menu systems, add call menus, transfer to voicemail and create flexible and programmable rules to handle all of these features. |
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Call menus-flexible call management menus with user selectable options: a |
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Managing extensions-features to help the phone system administrator by allowing the addition of new extensions, removal of unneeded extensions, change of extension locations and much more from a web-based control panel |
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Voicemail and voice mailboxes-any IP-PBX should allow an almost infinite number with far more flexibility than regular phone systems -- more advanced features would include the ability to record ALL incoming and outgoing |
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Call hold-placing callers properly on hold with no drop off in queues with user selectable hold music and programmable options about handling hold time length. |
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Conference calling-handling multi-party conference calls -- internally and |