Introduction
The acronym PBX is short form for “Private Branch Exchange”, which is often referred to as a business phone system or office phone system. A PBX is a system which connects the internal business phones in the office to the outside telephone company. If you have ever peered into the back room of your office and noticed a server with lots of telephone lines running into it, what you are looking at is the office pbx system.
Purpose
The purpose of a PBX is to allow employees within the office to make/receive calls that originate from outside the office. You can think of this as your home phone service except that employees within an office have many different phone numbers and several phone lines which need to be shared amongst everyone in an organized fashion.
Common Features
A PBX will often deliver a number of features to the employees within an office. These common features can include:
- A voicemail system with multiple mailboxes for each employee
- Virtual receptionist or auto attendant to direct callers to different departments
- Paging or intercom features for broadcasting message amoung many phone sets
- Hunt groups which ring multiple phone sets at once such as a “sales department”
- Call transfer and conference calling features
- Dial by name directory for finding employees within an office
- Handle calls differently depending on the time of day
New Trends in PBX Technology
One of the newest and most exciting trends in pbx technology is that of the hosted pbx service which replaces the need for businesses to maintain a pbx system at their office. Instead the pbx system is run remotely from a data center which reduces the costs and maintenance common with on premise pbx systems.
PBX Usage
Typically a pbx has been associated with large corporations who can afford expensive telecommunications equipment. However, recently many small pbx devices and hosted pbx offerings have made a pbx system affordable for small businesses.