The future of phone systems: everything you need to know about switching to VoIP

Phone systems have been an essential part of businesses for 150 years, allowing them to receive and make calls to customers and clients. However, the traditional phone system, which relies on copper or digital phone lines, is now on its way out. BT has announced that new copper phone lines (PSTN) or digital (ISDN) phone lines will no longer be available from 2025, with the implementation already underway in some areas of the UK.

The dark side of traditional phone system providers

In the past, businesses had to rely on BT’s local business contacts to install and maintain their phone systems. However, anyone could set themselves up as a BT local business by registering with BT. As a result, businesses would often be locked into long 5-year contracts, even for minor changes to their phone systems. This practice is outdated and has no place in the modern world.

The solution: VoIP

The shift away from traditional phone systems is forcing businesses to find new solutions, and the answer is Voice over IP (VoIP). VoIP allows businesses to make and receive calls over the internet, eliminating the need for copper or digital phone lines. Because VoIP is essentially an app this means that it is entirely normal for IT companies to install and maintain companies’ phone systems as you no longer need BT phone lines for the system to run on.

VoIP offers significant cost savings

One significant benefit of VoIP is cost savings. Making calls over a VoIP phone system can be much cheaper than traditional phone systems and indeed, depending on the number of calls made, can be completely free.

To use a VoIP phone system, a software-based Private Branch Exchange (PBX) is required, along with SIP trunks, which are the modern digital version of a phone line. SIP trunks are inexpensive, costing around £5 per month with two channels, and come with a calling package. At Allware we offer SIP trunks through Gamma, and they come with a whopping 2000 minutes of free calls to UK landline and mobiles. You can put as many channels on as you like on these SIP trunks. A channel enables one incoming or outgoing phone call at a time, so if you have 10 channels, you can make and receive 10 simultaneous calls. These cost around £5/month per channel, so very simple billing.

PBX systems

There are many PBX systems to choose from, with some of the most popular being 3CX, Horizon, and FreePBX (the system we use at Allware). FreePBX is free to install, with optional modules available for call recording, softphones (making and receiving calls through a mobile phone or computer), desktop phone management, and more. For a small business, a simple FreePBX phone system can cost as little as £20 per month for hosting the server, with an additional £5 per month for a two-channel SIP trunk. Because it’s a small system of course you would therefore not expect to pay anything for your calls, so these systems can be very affordable. If you want to expand to more calls, more desktop phones, more channels, then it is easy to do one you have the basic phone system in place.

Microsoft Teams Calling

Microsoft Teams now offers Teams Calling, allowing businesses to purchase licenses to receive calls on their own business number. However, costs can quickly add up, particularly if every staff member needs a license to make calls. That said, for a small business with 2 staff the Teams Calling plan is currently £10.50/month/user. If you want flexibility though and features such as interactive voice reponse and ring groups then you would need to look at an Enterprise license with Teams, so costs can quickly run away.

Allware’s successful implementation of VoIP

Allware recently completed a successful rollout of a 50-phone VoIP system for a customer, who was previously paying for a large number of ISDN channels. By porting all their Direct Dial-In (DDI) numbers over to a SIP trunk, all costs became transparent and easily understandable. The customer now has a modern phone system that works exactly as they want it to, with the ability for users to work from home, mobile phones, desktop phones, or computers with Bluetooth headsets. There are no hidden costs and, crucially, the customer is not tied into any long-term contracts.

Conclusion The switch to VoIP phone systems is the future for businesses, eliminating the need for traditional phone lines and saving costs. With a range of PBX systems available and inexpensive SIP trunks, it is now easy for businesses of any size to implement a modern phone system that meets their needs.

Talk to us today about how we can help you.