How It Works - Telephone Systems with VoIP Made Easy

Quite simply, Internet Telephony or VoIP is the ability to make voice calls over an Internet connection. A hosted PBX is the name given to a telephone service where the switchboard is located in the Internet rather than in your building. This technology provides great benefits and features to businesses of all sizes, but it does mean that the broadband service must be of high quality with voice traffic being given priority. This is called Quality of Service (QoS) and is where our broadband products stand out from the crowd.

How do I make a call using these phone systems?

A phone call is made by using a SIP phone which connects directly to the Internet and to the Switchboard in The Cloud. SIP stands for Session Initiation Protocol and is the industry standard protocol which most telephone system providers (except Skype) use.

These SIP phones are specially made to work with the Internet. They are far more intelligent than standard old fashioned analogue hand sets.

When you get a new phone it has to know how to connect to the Birchills Telecom network. Birchills Telecom will already have loaded an Internet address for it to visit and find the information it needs. This process is called provisioning. Once provisioned it knows where to connect to and where to send information. The business phone will do this whenever it is powered up, wherever it is connected.

What does the Switchboard in the Cloud do?

The switchboard allows you to configure all of the call features, and holds the telephone numbers that relate to all of your handsets. You can even have multiple phone numbers associated with a single phone. It performs all of the calling features behind the scenes including recording calls, storing voicemail messages, diverting calls and playing music on hold. Essentially it is the brain, making all the things happen.

It’s not really a switchboard is it?

No, it’s a number of servers running a standard operating system, on top of which software runs handling all of the packet routing and requests to the various other servers that make up the Birchills Telecom network and business phone systems.

How does this connect in to the normal telephone network?

The normal phone network is called the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network).

We have gateways which interface directly with the PSTN so when you dial a number, the Switchboard In The Cloud bounces the request on to the gateway, which in turn passes it out to the public telephone network.

What does all this mean?

Your SIP phone takes your voice, digitises it, then passes the signal securely into our network, where it is routed and translated as necessary before being routed onward via other servers and systems to the recipient.

So What?

This system allows a revolution in telephone systems. No longer do you need to buy an expensive PBX, house it and maintain it. You can have a system which operates in the cloud - after all your phone calls already are carried by VoIP (although you may not know it). This all adds up to a telephone system with no capital cost, an amazing feature set, and a radical new price point.