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What Is A PBX?

A PBX (Private Branch Exchange) is a small telephone switch owned by a corporation or organization. It allows employees in the same office to share a small number of telephone lines from the phone company. Each employee is assigned an extension, and a typical PBX provides features such as auto attendant, music on hold, call transfer, call forwarding, and voicemail.

Traditional PBX manufacturers include Lucent, Nortel, Avaya, Panasonic, and NEC.

What Is Voice Over IP (VoIP)?

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a technology for making voice calls using a broadband Internet connection instead of a regular (POTS) phone line. Today many VoIP services allow you to call anyone who has a telephone number - whether it is local, long distance, mobile, or international.

What Is An IP PBX?

An IP PBX integrates VoIP with the traditional office PBX. It can switch calls between IP phones as well as regular phones, allowing IP phone users to share a small number of analog telephone lines, or share one (or a few) virtual main phone number(s) hosted by a VoIP service provider such as Luxon Communications. With an IP PBX a company can do away with traditional phone lines entirely, both voice and data traffic will be carried over the same broadband Internet connection.

What Is The Advantage Of IP PBX?

With an IP PBX phones can be used from anywhere over the Internet. They don't have to be in the same office or even in the same country. And with the prevalance of WiFi service in many public areas you will be able to use a WiFi IP phone like a cell phone, at a much lower cost.

What Is Hosted PBX Service?

With Hosted PBX Service, the PBX servers are managed by the VoIP service provider at a centralized, secure location, often equipped with a power generator and fast Internet connection. Calls can be routed to IP phones installed at the customer's premises, or forwarded to an existing phone line or mobile phones. The advantage of this type of service is that it requires very little upfront investment, service is billed month to month. It is also more reliable, since there are multiple servers for redundancy, and the customer can continue to receive calls even if its own Internet connection is down.

What Is A Call Center?

A call centre is a centralized office that handles a large volume of telephone calls. It is often used by companies to provide customer service and product support, and by telemarketers. Many companies today build call centers overseas to reduce cost, VoIP made this possible by routing calls to international destinations with no additional cost.

What Is A WiFi IP Phone?

A WiFi IP phone uses the wireless local area network (WLAN) to connect to the Internet. Once it is connected to the Internet it works just like any other IP phone. You can use WiFi IP phones where a WLAN is present, such WiFi hotspots. You can build your own wireless network at home or in your office with a WiFi router that can be purchased for less than $40 at most eletronics stores.

What Are FXO And FXS?

Foreign Exchange Office (FXO) interface is an RJ-11 connector that connects to the public switched telephone network's (PSTN) central office, or to a station interface on a PBX. Your home telephone, for example, has an FXO interface.

Foreign eXchange Subscriber (FXS) interface is the port from the (PSTN) central office, or the station interface on a PBX. The telephone jack on the wall, for example, is an FXS interface. An FXS connects to an FXO, and vice versa.

What Is The Quality of VoIP

Depends on the provider. The quality of Luxon's service is comparable to a landline, provided you have a reliable Internet connection with sufficient bandwidth.

How Reliable Is VoIP

Luxon offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee. In the event that your Internet connection goes down, calls can be automatically forwarded to your cell phones. The phone numbers will never be down, we have backup servers in different geographical areas.

How Much Bandwidth Do I Need

Without compression you will need roughly 80 kbits/sec per active VoIP conversation. The maximum available from a DSL is about 750kb/s, which will support up to 8 simultaneous calls. However if you have computers or other devices sharing the same network connection, those can cause interference and degrade the quality of the call. The solution is to either have a separate DSL dedicated to the IP phones, or use a router that supports QoS, which would give priority to the voice traffic and limit the amount of bandwidth other devices can use. Nowadays many routers, including the small Linksys WRT54G, offer such feature.



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