Business Phone Systems

Business Phone Systems

Author
Discussion

Exigeowner

Original Poster:

873 posts

203 months

Thursday 8th November 2007
quotequote all
I am just about to move offices and expand with new staff etc,

I was planning of having BT install 5 new lines, four being for 4 staff members and one being fax / broadband.

Chatting to a friend he asked WTF I was doing that for and claims that if I spend a few hundred quid on a 2nd hand phone system I would only need 1 line and still be able to have 4 people on the phone at once and still be able to use the fax and have broadband on.

Anybody have any idea on this, I though even with a phone system we would still need additional line,

Currently we have the BT phones Featureline and Embark which is like a phone system where we can trasnfer calls around the office but we do have the requisit number of lines for the people here.

Plotloss

67,280 posts

272 months

Thursday 8th November 2007
quotequote all
You cant have 4 people on the phone at once with a single standard analogue line, unless they are all talking to the same person.

You could however do it with a VOIP PBX

Edited by Plotloss on Thursday 8th November 12:43

dcw@pr

3,516 posts

245 months

Thursday 8th November 2007
quotequote all
We have an trixbox VOIP PBX, which is very good, but I would 100% recommend you have a dedicated ADSL line for it, don't share with your internet browsing connection, even with QoS

K50 DEL

9,277 posts

230 months

Thursday 8th November 2007
quotequote all
Cost wise it'll be cheaper to go for the option you've already mentioned.
If you have a phone system fitted you'll still need 4 lines (unless you don't want all of your staff to be able to be on the phone at once)

The advantages to having a phone system are the fact that you'll be able to make internal calls without charge, you can transfer calls, expand the system as your business grows.
Perhaps the biggest advantage though is that your business will only have one telephone number which will ring all handsets.

A secondhand Panasonic KXT or KXTD would fill your needs perfectly and are great, reliable systems.
Some of our branches are still running systems that are 10 years old with no issues.

Mosi

2,040 posts

217 months

Thursday 8th November 2007
quotequote all
I have a 3 year old BT Norstar ISDN phone system sat around gathering dust if you want to buy it (open to offers). We ran 30 DDI's off it

We upgraded to a BT BCM 50 when we moved offices, so it became surplus to requirement.

Email me as I dont look on here much smile