Telephone Systems - Technology Overview

Purchasing a telephone system can be a daunting task for any business, and never more so than right now. With a whole host of different technologies and systems all purporting to be the answer to your businesses needs, which ones really do deliver ?

We recognize that most of our customers aren’t telecoms experts and with this in mind we’ve set out to explain, as simply as possible, the main differences between these technologies and the individual systems that we sell to meet your business needs.

So what are the major differences between the technologies ?

Voice over IP, or TDM? – unfortunately we’re going to need to start with a small amount of jargon first! – but what does it mean ? Voice over IP, or VOIP is a relatively new standard in telephony enabling voice calls to be transmitted internally across your computer network and externally via either traditional analogue PSTN or digital ISDN lines, or even across the internet using SIP trunks. The technology is powerful, reliable and cost effective

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Traditional telephone systems, such as the ones you’ve probably used in the past, are based on TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) technology. Systems using this technology have been around for a long time and the technology is proven, reliable and cost effective. whilst not as flexible as VOIP technology, a large proportion of business telephone systems in the UK today are still based on TDM technology.

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Hybrid Telephone Systems – To address the shortcomings of existing TDM systems, whilst taking advantage of their benefits in terms of reliability, and also incorporating the features and operational benefits of VOIP systems, manufacturers some time ago started to produce hybrid systems - a mix of TDM and VOIP technologies. Most new telephone systems available on the market today leverage the benefits of both technologies in the same system.

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What about hosted telephony ?

Hosted Telephony – This is an exciting new development in the market and it works by presenting all your voice and internet services across either a voice enabled broadband connection, or if you have a high number of users a leased line connection. Your handsets are plugged directly into your broadband or leased line and no telephone equipment is needed internally, it’s all hosted in a secure data centre off site.

This has some extremely attractive cost benefits, as there are no capital costs for a telephone system (although you will still need to rent or buy your handsets) and call costs are free between extensions and very cheap externally. Line costs are also a fraction of the price of traditional analogue or ISDN lines. Branch offices and remote workers can also seamlessly be linked to the same system.

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How do I get more information ?

If you wish to discuss any of the systems or technologies mentioned above in greater detail, please don't hesitate to call us on the number below, we'll be pleased to help you: