Saving Thousands on Business Phone Systems
If you have or are looking at getting a phone system you should definitely look at an open source phone system. The one I like the most right now is PBX In A Flash. This phone system software is based primarily on Asterisk and Free PBX. There are no costs for licensing or software, the only cost you will pay is for the hardware and possibly someone to set it up for you if you aren’t comfortable installing it on your own.
The components you will need to get going are:
- A server – The server is the brains of your phone system. This is basically just a computer. Often people will use an abandoned old workstation. The kind of computer you use here is dependent on how many phones and simultaneous calls you plan to have.
- Phones – I prefer the Polycom phones in most all cases. Currently the Polycom 335 or the 450 are a great model.
- Ethernet switch – You can either purchase your phones with power supplies or without. When you purchase them without you can have the Ethernet switch provide the power. This requires a special Ethernet switch that uses POE (Power Over Ethernet). You will want to make sure you purchase a switch with enough POE ports to run all the phones you buy. Some POE switches have a mix of POE and non POE ports. Read the fine print carefully.
The other major element to setting up your business phone system is the service. You will need a phone service carrier to provide the service to your phone system. With traditional phone systems you would hook to the phone carrier via analog or T-1 type lines. This is how many businesses still connect and get their voice service. These days though there is a great alternative which is VOIP (Voice Over IP) providers. These phone carriers are really getting good, they have become more stable and have improved quality.
You also get more service options for a lot less money. Here is an off the cuff cost comparison based on my experience between traditional phone carriers and VOIP carriers:
Traditional Carrier
Bonded T-1 with 8 shared phone lines and Internet service
What the carrier does here is they bring in two T-1 lines and bond them as a single data circuit. You get a 3mbps Internet connection and 8 phone lines. You would use 7 of the lines for your phone system and the other line for a fax.
Cost:
Port charge – Typically around $200
Line charge – Typically around $25 / line (I’m being conservative)
Internet Bandwidth charge – Around $200
Total: $600 (I’ve seen bills much higher than this for less service)
VOIP Carrier
With VOIP carriers you typically pay for the DID (phone number) and then per minute for service. Although I’ve seen some selling service as unlimited and you pay for an inbound / outbound channel. If you have heavy call volume this would make sense, but for most people it probably doesn’t.
Cost:
Internet Service – I recommend cable modem if available, otherwise DSL – Cost: $130 (Could be as low as $80, depends on available options)
DID – $1.49 per phone number you want. Typically you may want a DID for each phone, this is a nice feature as it gives each phone on your system its own direct dial number.
Main Phone Number DID – $7.49 Unlimited inbound. The main number should be an unlimited inbound DID typically.
Average monthly usage: 5000 minutes (this is probably a high estimate, everyone’s will be different)
Cost: $55
Total Cost: $204.41
The VOIP provider I used for the example is Vitelity.net. As you can see the savings monthly on service alone probably justifies moving to a VOIP PBX from your current system. I know friends that have small businesses that were paying close to $1,000 a month for a few phone lines and Internet. They switched to the open source system and save the cost of the phone system every couple of months.