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Business Telephone Systems

Business Telephone Systems Optimized for North America

To those that are new to buying telephone systems, we understand how daunting the task can be. With that in mind, we have taken the opportunity to give a "big picture" view of what is required to understand about business telephones in general. We then explain what path BluegrassNet Voice has chosen to take in regards to deploying business phone systems.

The first thing to understand is that a business grade telephone system is reffered to as the "PBX" (Public Branch Exchange) in normal conversation.

In today's voice market PBX system's come in three basic types. Those types and information are listed below.

» Traditional PBX
A traditional PBX is a phone system that connects to the public telephone network with Analog or Digital (T-1/PRI) phone connections. The handsets on a traditional PBX require separate voice wiring and the handsets themselves can be either Analog or Digital voice processing.

» VoIP PBX
A VoIP (voice over IP) PBX is a phone system that uses the data network to deliver voice communication. There are many different protocols for which this is performed including, but not limited to: H.323, MGCP, SIP, IAX2, SCCP.

» Hybrid PBX
A hybrid PBX system is any phone system that has the ability to bridge calls between traditional connections and VoIP connections. In some cases a traditional PBX with non-IP-based handsets can be upgraded with an add-on card in order to receive inbound/outbound calls via a VoIP provider. In other cases a VoIP PBX can be equiped with Analog or T-1 interface cards in order to communicate over the PSTN with a traditional circuit will retaining the flexibility of Move/Add/Changes in a pure IP environment.

Historically, when a business bought a Telephone System, it meant buying a brand-name system where an actual piece of equipment showed up at the business, was fastened to the wall, and the inbound telephone lines and handsets were connected to that system. These systems supported the users at that particular site, and that was all that was expected. Connecting multiple sites required interconnecting point-to-point T1 circuits and annex equipment at the remote site to communicate with the handsets. Not only will a VoIP PBX eliminate the need for these annex connections, but with the maturation and flexibility of VoIP, there is the added dimension of "piggy backing" on someone else's VoIP PBX to get the PBX features, but not necessarily the costs associated with buying a full-blown in-house telephone system. This is called "Hosted PBX", by nature of the equipment being hosted off-site at an other location. This creates the fourth option:

» Hosted PBX System
A VoIP PBX system that allows multiple tenants to operate their phones remotely on a shared resource. Ideally this is provisioned on an Internet connection that is extremely reliable.

Whether a hosted PBX or an in-house PBX make more sense for you, BluegrassNet Voice can help you weigh these options and assist in the planning process to ultimately get you, the customer, the best value for their money, while at the same time taking into consideration your business' plan for the future.

What type of system is the best? An Asterisk system? A Cisco, Nortel, Avaya? There are a lot of brand-name systems in the marketplace at this time. BluegrassNet Voice has found that the best and most honest PBX is an open-source system. For our experience, this means an Asterisk based system.

Asterisk is the most popular, most installed PBX internationally. At 83% marketshare of Voice-over-IP systems, no other product comes close. What is Asterisk and why is it so popular? Under development since 1999, Asterisk is free, open source software that turns an ordinary computer into a feature-rich voice communications server.

Of course, there are some pretty serious things to keep in mind when unleashing it, but if it is installed correctly, and maintained in a proper manner, it can deliver more options, more flexibility, better expandability, and all at a much lower price.

» You are not locked into using the same vendor for the rest of your life.
» There are no onerous licensing fees when you add users.
» You have complete freedom to add third-party software that will allow the system to do specifically required tasks germane to your business only as desired.
» There is an army of support personnel, for hire and free forums, on the Internet to support you if you need help.
» You have access to the source code if you need it or wish to audit it.
» You can experience considerable savings over other brands without compromising features.
» You can make changes to the system at will. You have complete control all the way down to the source code if you want to program in and out of the system.
» Expensive Move/Add/Changes (MACs) no longer manifest as hidden costs. Your MACs are as easy as plugging in at a new location or changing a setting on the phone or adminstrator panel.

Using Asterisk In A Business Environment

With all this under consideration, it is little wonder why is the most installed and used PBX in the world. However, life has taught us that nothing is ever as easy as it sounds. In order to deliver a system that is usable to the average employee, is low-maintenance to the business owner, is flexible in a low-cost way to the business operations manager; there is a planning and execution component that requires experience that a company like BluegrassNet Voice brings to the table.

It is also important to understand that there are applications that run on top of Asterisk that literally "bring it to life" in a way that enhance Asterisk dramatically. These are third party system management tools, call center applications, and other functionality enhancing software that BluegrassNet Voice specializes in implementing and supporting. These applications allow users to make changes to the system from a web-browser, allow system managers to extract call records and other data quickly and easily (such as call centers, for example). In the end, BluegrassNet Voice specializes in building Asterisk based systems, and operating overlaying management tools such as Thirdlane, iSymphony, and Queuemetrics.

BluegrassNet Voice currently supports vanilla-asterisk and Thirdlane systems across the United States and in several other countries as well. We work with internal IT staffs to provide high level project assistance in the deployment of these PBX's. These types of customers range from small businesses with 10 handsets; to call-centers that span three different time-zones with hundreds of simultaneous users all riding off a centralized system in a data center; to enterprise mass-hosting multi-tenant solutions with high available data replication and many thousands of handsets connecting to that system.

We are 100% confident that an Asterisk based system is the best choice for any business looking for a phone system.


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