What is a hosted PBX?

A hosted PBX is basically a telephone system delivered via the internet. PBX stands for private branch exchange, an old lefty term used to describe large phone systems. In this video when you hear the term PBX, just think phone system. With a hosted phone system, you own the telephones, but your hosting provider owns all the backend equipment that makes the phones work. For simplicity’s sake there are three basic parts of a hosted PBX; 1. A voice over IP telephone 2. The internet and 3. A hosted PBX provider. Once your phones are properly connected to your office, they will connect to the hosts accompany it via the Internet. This connection will always remain active so that the phone is always ready to make and receive phone calls. Since hosted phone systems use voice over IP your phones will be connected to your computer networking cables and not your regular phone cables. I’m making the assumption that you already have a wired local area network or LAN with a network cable for each location that needs a phone, if not,  you’ll need to factor that into the cost of your new phone system. Most higher-end voice over IP phones have two ethernet jacks, an in and an out, this allows you to utilise your existing network cabling. You simply unplug the existing network cable from your PC and plug it into the input of your phone, you’ll then use another cable to plug the PC into your telephone keeping the network connectivity to your computer. VOIP phones can get power from one of two sources an AC adapter or a POE (which stands for power over Ethernet) and it is not a standard option on all network switches. If you don’t have a POE, you’ll need to use a power supply at each phone, once everything is connected properly your phones will register to the hosted equipment and via the internet.

What happens to your phone lines when you switch to a hosted PBX?

The hosting company will, in effect, become your phone company. Your phone numbers will come from the hosting company, inbound and outbound calls will go through to the hosting company. You may need to keep a few standard phone lines for fax machines, credit card terminals and alarm systems just keep that in mind.

How does it work? Ingoing calls:

When someone calls you from another business, they dial your phone number their telephone company will connect to your hosting company, your hosting company will then route the call to the proper phone or phones connected via the Internet. Simple.

Here is the process in reverse – outgoing calls:

First, you dial a number on your telephone, which is connected to your hosting company via the internet, the phone takes your analogue voice and converts it to digital packets designed to be sent across the network. Those packets are sent to your router and your router has been properly configured to prioritise all voice traffic coming from and going to the hosted PBX. The router takes the voice packet and marks it to be sent to your hosting company via the internet, the packets are routed over the Internet to the hosting company and the hosting company then connects back to the public switched telephone network and sends the calls to the proper landline or mobile phone.

What are the main benefits of a hosted PBX phone system?

• Lower initial cost: while you must either purchase or lease the phones, you do not have to purchase the back end equipment or phone lines. You just need a local area network and a good internet connection.
• There are fewer things to break: you don’t have to worry about providing maintenance and repairs to the back end control equipment, since this equipment is located with the hosting company they’re responsible for any maintenance to the control equipment.
• Advanced calling features: you get all the features found in advanced phone systems, it’s great for remote workers or if you have a geographically diverse workforce they can all be tied together with one phone system. Customers won’t know if they’re talking to someone in Sydney or Perth, employees can work from a home office or anywhere as long as they have a good internet connection. Perhaps you have a key employee who has to move out of state, with a hosted phone system they can still work for you with an IP phone and a VPN connection and nobody would ever know the difference.
• Scalability: what happens if you only need five phones today but ten phones tomorrow. With the hosted PBX you do not have to worry about expensive upgrades to your back-end equipment because that’s all taken care of by the hosting company.
• Business continuity: what will happen if there’s a natural disaster or pandemic and you cannot get to your office for an extended period of time or what happens if your office is destroyed by a fire? With a hosted solution all of your calls can be quickly rerouted to another location. Remote workers could still process calls on their IP phones and many hosting solutions can automatically forward calls to your mobile phone when your office phone is disconnected.
• It’s easier to move offices or locations: with the hosted solution, moves are much easier than with the more traditional systems. You can move your phones across the office or across the country by simply unplugging it and plugging it into another network connection.
• Automatic upgrades: since you do not control the equipment you don’t have to worry about any software updates and features because the hosting company will take care of this.
• Remote phone numbers: for example let’s say your office is in Surry Hills, Sydney but you wish to establish a presence in St Kilda, Melbourne, with the hosted solution you can have a Melbourne number ring directly to your Sydney phone, in fact, you can have phone numbers from most any city in Australia and even from other countries.

Making the call:

Smarties’ easy to use quote comparison tool allows you to buy business phone systems with ease, we only partner with the best phone system providers so you can be sure to get a quality system for the best price, Australia wide. Do business with a company that has your best interests in mind. If you are an Australian business looking to get some business phone quotes, click the compare quotes button to get started today.