PBX

Home and Small Business Usage

Historically, the expense of full-fledged PBX systems has put them out of reach of small businesses and individuals. However, since the 1990s there has been a large set of small, consumer-grade and consumer-size PBXs available. These systems are not comparable in size, robustness or flexibility to commercial-grade PBXs, but still provide a surprising set of features.

The first consumer PBX systems were for the analog telephone systems, typically supporting four private analog and one public analog line. They have the size of a small cigar box or smaller and are inexpensive (e.g. US$50).

Particularly in Europe these systems for analog phones were followed by consumer-grade PBXs for ISDN. Using small PBXs for ISDN is a logical step, since already the Basic Rate Interface of ISDN (which is the phone interface individuals and small businesses typically get) provides two logical phone lines (two B channels) which can be used in parallel. Small, entry-level systems are also extremely cheap (e.g. US$100).

With the pickup of VoIP by consumers, of course consumer VoIP PBXs have seen the light, and PBX functions have become simple additional features of consumer-grade routers and switches.

Proponents of recent open source projects (in particular, Asterisk and SIPfoundry) claim that their initiatives have finally brought PBXs within the reach of individuals and small businesses. However, some affordable off-the-shelf solutions have been available since the beginning of the 90s. The mentioned open source projects provide more flexibility and more features (often not needed or understood by average users) on standard hardware platforms, plus means to actually inspect and change the inner working of a PBX. They have also opened business opportunities for newcomers to the market of mid-size PBX, since they have lowered the entry barrier for new manufacturers .

posted by Jack @ 9:24 AM