How T-1 PBX Phone Lines Save
Money
The variety of T-1 telephone trunk
lines offer a cost savings for most business phone systems using
PBX or Enterprise VoIP.
Most business telephone systems that have
more than a few outside lines now use T-1 trunk lines to connect
from your building to the local telephone office. Why? Because
the value in consolidating many individual phone lines into a
single or a couple of T-1 lines makes digital lines more cost
effective than a collection of analog phone lines. This is true
regardless of whether your in-house phone system uses analog
or digital phones. Even most VoIP based phone systems terminate
calls in T-1 telephone lines.
When to Consider T-1 Service
Very simple one and two line phones or key telephone systems
with 4 to 6 outside lines are set up for analog phone lines.
The simple VoIP services use an analog phone adaptor to connect
to DSL broadband service to provide 1 or 2 lines. That's pretty
much the extent of what you can do with these simple systems.
Once you get more than a half-dozen outside phone lines, you
should be looking at T-1 service as a cost saver.
There are several flavors of T-1 line services
to be aware of. A standard T-1 telephone trunk offers up to 24
individual phone lines all digitized and multiplexed into two
pair of copper wires that connect back to the telco central office.
Your PBX system needs a T-1 interface card to connect to a T-1
line. These are pretty much a standard option for any new PBX
phone system and you can likely order a plug-in T-1 card for
older systems.
The Advantage of T-1 PRI Service
A variation on the T-1 line is called an ISDN PRI or T-1 PRI
phone line. PRI stands for Primary Rate Interface and it's part
of the ISDN or Integrated Services Digital Network specifications.
A regular channelized T-1 line and a T-1 PRI line are pretty
much the same animal, with one important difference. PRI lines
offer 23 rather than 24 phone lines and use the remaining channel
to provide signaling and data. You need a PRI line if you want
Caller ID for your phones.
Integrated Service Gives You Both Phone
and Internet
Another variation is called T-1 Integrated service. Integrated
means that the line carries both telephone calls and Internet
data. That's right, you can split a T-1 line so that you can
have a dozen outside phone lines plus broadband Internet service
coming in on the same line. This is quite a cost saver for most
small businesses that need both phone and reliable Internet service.
Some of these Integrated services are called dynamic T-1 lines
because they automatically assign all the bandwidth not needed
for active phone calls to the Internet service.
What about VoIP phone systems?
Most Enterprise VoIP phone systems use IP telephony within the
company so that the phones can connect to the IP PBX system using
standard Ethernet cabling. Many use the same LAN as the company's
computers to save on wiring costs. All the in-house calls go
from phone to phone over the network. But outside calls still
have to connect or terminate to the PSTN or Public Switched Telephone
Network. Most often that interface is within the IP PBX system
or voice gateway. The most common phone line interface is the
T-1 or T-1 PRI digital phone line, just like conventional PBX
systems.
Another option that's not quite as widely
deployed is to connect your phones to a VoIP service provider
in IP format directly from your network. The service provider
takes care of terminating calls to the PSTN. The network connection
from your company to the service provider is called a SIP Trunk
and is most often a type of T-1 line set up to be unchannelized
to transport voice packets.
The New Price Advantage of T-1 Lines
You should know that T-1 line prices are lower now than they've
ever been. If you're still using analog phone lines connected
to your PBX telephone system, it may well be worth your while
to convert to one or more T-1 or T-1 PRI lines. If you already
have T-1 service, then you should get a competitive quote to
see how much you might save on your next contract.
Why
not talk it over with our technical consultants and get competitive
pricing to compare with your other options? Spend a few minutes
and you may save yourself a lot of potential grief and perhaps
a lot of money too. Simply fill out the form below to see instant
pricing on most services. Or call toll free 1-866-436-7868 Ref. # 1265
to talk to our technical consultants about your business needs
and receive customized proposals.
