Telephone Exchange Thingy

[lesliedocherty]

Hi,

We are on BT and wondering if there is any options for us regarding a small telephone exchange ( i use the word exchange loosely, because i don't know what else it would be called) for 4 users, save us having to walk to find someone when a call comes to them. We currently use a gigabit triple phone pack from argos.
Want the caller to call, get list of option 1 for sales, 2 for accounts, etc, ability to leave voicemail, ability to transfer calls between handsets.

any ideas ?? or just stick with triple phone ?

 

[cjd]

The thing you're struggling to find is a PBX, Private Branch eXchange - a switchboard.

You can buy a proprietary physical box and hook it into the public telephone system or even download free software to run on a dedicated PC such as Asterisk or 3CX.

But really the cheapest and safest way to do it these days is to use a cloud PBX. Needless to say we do a good one

Some info here and/or give us a call.

https://www.voipfone.co.uk/what-is-a-pbx.php

 

[lesliedocherty]

can i keep my number with voip, think that may be the reason i discounted it before, also, internet can cut-off randonly here, so dont want to be reliant on web

 

[Ashley_Price]

internet can cut-off randonly here, so dont want to be reliant on web

If your internet is unreliable, I would think carefully, before going over to VOIP.

 

[cjd]

can i keep my number with voip, think that may be the reason i discounted it before, also, internet can cut-off randonly here, so dont want to be reliant on web

Yes, you can keep your number.

There's no reason why your internet should cut out - is this BT also? Have you had it tested?

It's still just about possible to get an legacy PBX but it's not a good solution as BT are switching their ISDN network off in 2025. Everything will be VoIP then. Far better to sort out your internet now, but if you can't it wouldn't be wise to convert to VoIP. You could probably pick up a PBX on ebay and get a couple of ISDN circuits, but that will be limited and expensive compared to a VoIP solution.

 

[lesliedocherty]

i dont really want voip, i just want the ability to transfer calls between handsets as a minimum
the ability to divert calls to right person with a voice prompt would be nice, ie 1 for sales
voicemail would be ok as well

are there any handset sets that you can transfer calls between them, maybe that would be simpler ?

 

[lesliedocherty]

Hey,

Think this will do the job, telephone support was pretty good aswell, £90 seems a good deal to me

http://www.ligo.co.uk/siemens-gigaset-c530a-trio#product-description

 

[cjd]

Loads of phones will let you transfer calls internally, if that's all you want to do, Siemens are fine.

But they're not a switchboard - you can't make or receive more than one call at a time and you can't do the other things you said you needed - the IVR stuff.

 

[lesliedocherty]

that'll do for me

 

[cjd]

Fine, but do get your internet sorted out, there's no reason to put up with a connection that keeps dropping out.