I just met with a client who called me in to see if they could somehow save on their monthly bill with Telus & upgrade their PBX system. They use the Talkswitch PBX, that connects to 4 incoming lines & they use generic V-tech single line phones at the desk.

With regards to their phone lines, I suggested they port over to Delta Cable business phone service…it seems Delta Cable provides business line service just like Shaw. Not sure if they are as good as the Shaw business lines ! Or at least negotiate with Telus with the intention to transfer the lines.

You will be amazed to know that Telus is matching Shaw promotion pricing to win back customers ! Now thats what I call “waking up to competition”.
In fact they didnt even know that Telus was charging them for 2 addtional lines which were apparently connected to the PBX but NOT IN SERVICE !!

But I couldn’t help them with their PBX system. Since they use generic phones, which are single line analog phones, they do not get the Key System Functionality that every small business customer is used to ( if you have started out with a 2 Line Panasonc/At&T/RCA phone…you will know !! ). They cannot simply put the line on Hold or able to intercom each other by a one touch button, or use paging via the phones.

It does help a great deal if your business VoIP provider’s infrastructure is local to your area. If you are looking for good call quality for local calls and not too concerned about the unlimited long distance carrot, then look for a VoIP provider that operates locally and has local PSTN gateways to ensure that great landline type quality. This ensures that the call is over the local Internet only from your end to the providers servers and then the call hops on to the local PSTN trunks!

Any 2-Line phone will allow you to put the first line on hold and pick up the second line. Cordless phones too. As long as they are 2-Line phones, two people can call the same number ONLY if you have these 2-Lines setup in what is known as a Multi-Line Hunt Group or MLH.

Any phone, whether its 2 line or 3 line or 4 line, or a 12 line pbx….does NOT have the ability to create this multi-line hunt group BY ITSELF. It is something that your phone company sets up for you. The phone company can do this by providing you with 2 separate lines and program the First Line or your main line, to call forward ON BUSY to the second line. So that you can potentially have 2 people calling you on your main number. And this feature can be duplicated with as many lines as you need…. This is known as the MLH or Multi-line Hunt Group.

A PBX gives you that ability to hook up more phones, wherever you need them, so that you can access all your lines from any phone and put calls on hold and transfer calls at will !

There are four different components that make up a business phone solution, and you can mix and match between the four to get your preference choice of service.

Phone Lines :
Analog/Landlines like Primus/Shaw/Telus/Bell/Allstream
VOIP Lines/ SIP Trunks which would be provided by an alternate provider called ITSP, like VONAGE and a host of other individual providers who give you that $10 phone line with all features bundled.

Phone Systems :
Traditional PBX/Key Telephone System like the Panasonic, Nortel types
PURE VOIP/IP PBX Telephone Systems like the Asterisk based software pbx systems.
HYBRID VOIP/IP PBX /Key Telephone Systems

Today, you have complete flexibility in choosing the type of phone lines you want, and pair up with the phone system that suits your budget and needs.

You can connect Analog Landlines OR VOIP/SIP Lines to a Traditional PBX/Key Telephone System
At the same time you can connect Analog Landlines to an Asterisk Server based PURE IP PBX system too !!

Therein lies the key to building a good solution for your needs. You can opt for the latest PBX features provided by a PURE IP PBX System and use Analog Landlines so that all your phone calls are crystal clear and DO NOT use your internet service at all.

Analog or basic  2-Line or 4-Line  phones, have the ability to put the first cal on HOLD, if you want privacy and be able to take the next call that rings on the second line or third or fourth line…

And more importantly,  if you are solely dependant on cordless phones for obvious reasons, STAY away from PBX systems, since you will NOT be happy with the way PBX systems integrate with regular cordless phones.

You are losing out on the ability to re-route your calls though, a feature that is standard in all PBX systems !

VOIP is definitely not for everybody, especially in situations where all you need is a phone line to make and receive calls ! You do not NEED any additional features. All you need is a phone line that works and lets you have a professional business conversation over the phone !

So you have two or three or at the most 4  landlines. And lets assume you need three phone sets. Here are your options :

1. Go to Staples/London Drugs/Office Depot/Costco or eBay, and buy 2-Line Analog Phones. You should get them in the range of $20 to $60 each used or new.

In the PBX world, these phones are called Analog phones ( even if they have digital displays !), simply because they connect to your Primus/Telus/Shaw landlines which can also be called Analog Lines.
Bear in mind, that each of your primus line has to be connected to the Line Ports of each of those 2-Line Analog phones.
( which can get quite tedious once you start with 3 or 4 Primus lines and those 4-Line Analog Phones.)
This is the cheapest option to get your multiple lines from Primus, hooked up to multiple phones to make multiple calls !
Since it is a pretty much do-it-yourself project, you save on installation costs too.
But you lose on two important features : Call Privacy : which means anybody can barge onto any line, even if its in use. No call privacy.
Secondly, what happens if you want to put them on hold…there is NO music-on-hold input on most of these analog phones.
I have seen business owners upgrade to a PBX system simply because having music-on-hold playing while callers are on hold does lend a professional image to the business ! And I would agree that its an important feature.

2. If the above features are important to you, and/or you may need more than 2 Primus Lines and 3 Phones, it may be worthwhile to get a PBX system which will serve you well ! You will need to have a budget of at least $500/- which can get you a nice used pbx system with 3 phones.

A PBX system has a separate brain unit or server and phones that will work ONLY with this brain unit.

Try to look for a used PBX that has modular connections, which means you can plug in the primus phone lines and the pbx phones yourself ! That will save you on any installation costs. The older Nortel/Norstar/Meridian PBX system are NOT the right ones for you if you are a do-it-yourself types. All Panasonic PBX systems have modular connections which makes it real easy to hook them up yourself.

Also, look for the KEY System funcationality on the PBX. Each phone at your desk will have separate buttons programed for your lines and your phones, so that you can see which line is in use and who is using it !! Just like the way you would see in the 2-4Line Analog phone at staples, but in a most advanced way !!

Make sure that any PBX system you buy,used or new, has the Caller ID capability. Having an LCD display on the phone DOES NOT mean the pbx system will SHOW caller ID information. It can be more expensive to try and upgrade a used or new pbx system with Caller ID capability. Also, find out how many phone lines and phone-sets you can connect to the system AS IS, without any further upgrades ! There is always a difference between the current configuration and the full capacity !

It doesnt make sense to buy a used PBX system that will not give you the capacity you need without additional upgrades. Not worth the money & trouble !

Unlike the 2-Line / 4-Line Analog phones from Staples or Costco, a PBX system can give you the ability to have complete Call Privacy, Ability to intercom each other if you sit in different rooms, Music-on-hold capability to begin with ! And if you buy a good system to start with, it can last you many many years ! I have seen business customers using pbx systems that were installed in the late 80s and they still work !

The Auto-attendant Greeting with Menu Options for after-hours & Personal Mailbox Feature is another add-on that most pbx systems support.

A pbx phone system, in simple terms, gives you the ability to make multiple phone calls using multiple lines from multiple phones in your office.

There is a common misconception about pbx systems. It seems most people think that if you connect a pbx system to one phone line, it will automatically create more phone lines, so that all the phones connected to the system will be able to get more calls into the office !!

Your “phone company” provides more lines, and your “interconnect company” provides and maintains your pbx system and all the phones in your office.
You can simply add more lines, each with its own number, OR opt for “over-lines” which means more lines connected to your existing phone number.
Overlines added to your existing phone line, act as individual lines but they are a part of a hunt group, so that your line doesn’t ring busy till all the lines in the group are in use. Moreover all the lines in the hunt group display the same caller ID information when you call out ! Your main office number should show up on all the lines !

Once you have ordered more “overlines” for your office, its time to find out if a pbx system would be a good investment.

A pbx system would be worth considering if you have 2 incoming phone lines or more, & at the same time you have a staff of 3 that could be on the phone at the same time !

Its true that you can get away with the 2 or 4 Line Basic Phones from Costco or Staples, but always consider the cost of adding more phones and more lines as you grow. Not to mention, a professional business pbx phone system is the one that plays on-hold music when you put your callers on hold, while you complete calls or other tasks !

By the way, a good pbx system can last 25-30 years or more.

A Hosted/Virtual/Cloud PBX system would be a good alternative if you are looking for a feature-rich solution with minimum capital costs ! I call it a solution that gives you a complete phone system at the price of a phone line !!

There are three main components for the web presence of any business. And before you hire a web designing company, it would help to understand what you are paying for and what you actually own :

1.The Domain Name Registration i.e www.yourcompany.com ( also called the Domain Registrar )
2.The Web Hosting & eMail Service Provider
3.The Actual Website Content.

Think of your web presence as a Work of Art, for example, a well-framed designer painting for public display.

Domain Name Registration :

Your proof of ownership or invoice for the framing and its contents is Your “Domain Name Registration”. You should always register the domain name, or your website name, with your own credentials so that you can lay claim on its ownership at all times.
The cost for registering a domain is fixed and is minimal ( $10 per year !! )… and you can use any reputable provider to register your company domain.

Web & eMail Hosting :

The Art Gallery & its Postal Address, where your painting will be setup for public display, can be compared to your WEB Hosting & eMail Service Provider. You rent this space on a monthly basis.
This is the location where your website will be hosted for online display. You may chose to have the same provider do the domain registration & web-hosting.
In which case, you can control the Domain Registration & the web-hosting at one location. Compare the costs for Web-Hosting & eMail Accounts before deciding.

Website Content : CMS/Wordpress/HTML/PHP/FLASH

The object of the art depicted in the painting can be compared to the WEBSITE content. Your Website Designer of choice will be creating this content and have it setup with the Web Hosting Provider of your choice.
Sometimes your Web Designer may offer a bundle package to Design the Website & Host it for you. This may be due to technical reasons too. You may chose this route….AS LONG AS you have Registered the Domain Name yourself and have ownership info to prove it.

All Domain Registrars have the ability to POINT your website to the location where it will be hosted….ANY location !

To recap… you can chose a separate Domain Registrar to Register your Domain Name or Website Name. You should be in control of this part !!
You can chose a separate Web Hosting & eMail Service Provider… so shop around for the best deal.

And get your website Designed by a professional who can place it at a location that is suitable to you….NOT, the other way around !

In the event that you want to part ways with the Website Designer, you can simply re-direct your Domain to a NEW location or a new hosting provider AT ANY time! Since you control the Domain.

If at any point you are not happy with your Web Hosting & eMail Service Provider….. you can do just the same.

The key is in owning and controlling your Website Name & its registration. The rest is like changing the contents of your painting or the art gallery where it needs to be displayed !!

Hope this helps !

Metro Communications Inc., helped another small business located at Canada Way in Burnaby, unvoip !!

16 phones plugged into your computer network and sharing your internet for phone calls, is definitely not a good idea.

We were asked to “fix” problems this client was having with their state-of-the-art phone system.

“Our current VOIP phone line provider is not the delivering… we are having constant problems with our phone lines,  and the phones. Could we switch providers and get better service?”

That’s a huge misunderstanding! Your VOIP line provider or ITSP is merely providing you with an access to their VOIP Gateway for your phone numbers via VOIP lines or SIP trunks.

Its like providing you with a mailbox address where you can drop off and collect your mail. How much and how fast you can collect and drop off your mail is entirely up to you !! You will be using your resources to carry the mail to and from the mailbox and delivering it to your staff at each and every desk !

Get the picture?

So in order to get a better mail delivery system, simply changing the mailbox provider wont help.

This customer needed to look at their internal network, cabling, Internet provider, and its speed.

It would be important to note that the customer was not using Remote Extensions, Web based interface, Soft phones, Off-site transfers to cellphones or satellite offices connected to this phone system. All they needed was basic PBX functionality to manage incoming and outgiong calls from their office with Auto-attendant and individual voicemail.

The immediate solution which would alleviate some of the pain would be to either get a dedicated internet connection for the phone lines or get rid of the internet provider and switch to regular landlines.

Shaw Business Phone Lines were the best option at $19.99 per month.  They work just like regular land lines and do not use the internet bandwidth.

Since the internal network or LAN was in a bad shape, we decided to do away with the IP PBX altogether.

We helped them port all their phone numbers to Shaw last week.  And installation a traditional Key Telephone System with voicemail and 16 phones. Luckily their phone wiring was intact and we could install a new system without running new cables !!

The nightmare is over. The pain is gone.

When the world is going ga-ga over  Internet Phone lines or VOIP telephone service, Metro Communications Inc. a Vancouver based business phone system provider and interconnect company, is warning new prospects on the downfalls of  VOIP phone systems for business.

 “Don’t buy voip just for the hype!” This is the key message delivered by Shailesh Mehta, Product Manager at Metro Communications Inc.

 And, do that math to really find out whether voip in business will save you money.

 A VOIP phone service has all the great features, then why isn’t voip working out for small businesses?

 Well its not the technology. IP PBX technology by itself, is really good. It worked 5 years ago and continues to get better and better. The real bottleneck is when an IP PBX is sharing your internet service to provide you with internet phone lines.

 If you have experienced internet phone lines for business, you will know that 8 out of 10 small businesses are not 100% happy with the voip solution. Don’t be too surprised  to learn that its not the features of voip, but its actually the most basic requirement, and that’s…. call quality.

And that is the crux of the problem. VOIP providers are happily providing digital dial tones with all features and a phone number for a third of the cost. But they don’t own the circuit right down to the customer premise.

Their digital dial tone is riding over a third party broadband internet service which is pretty much like selling a fully loaded brand new car without wheels and expect the client to use his own resources to drive it around town.

You see “others” driving around this fancy car. Some are driving fast, some are driving slow, some may have great wheels some may not and that’s what you discover for yourself when you buy this fancy and fully loaded car for your business.

Most of us are disappointed because we do not have in-house wheels ( i.e. Internet Service ) powerful and stable enough, nor can we afford the type of wheels needed to run this car fast and smooth.

So what do we end up doing?  Every time we use this car, we end up blaming the car, not our wheels.

Haven’t you ever had this conversation with your caller, while talking on the VOIP Business line….

“Hey, are you on a cell phone? It seems to be a pretty bad network. I can hardly make out what you are saying. Maybe its a bad connection.”

And you say..”No its not a cellphone, I am trying this new VOIP phone system for business from XYZ, but it sucks. If XYZ cannot fix this for me, then I am cancelling this service.”

So who has to fix this service? The ITSP or VOIP Service provider??  Not really.

Well, all he did was to sell you dial-tone with a phone number for a third the price, and that’s what you got !

Why does he have to fix your line quality? After all, you were told it needs internet to work. And the quality will only depend on your internet capacity.

Bottom line…once again…don’t buy VOIP just for the HYPE.

The key is to get a solution that provides you with the features that you need without compromising on the call quality.

Metro Communications Inc.  provides you with a business phone system solution that combines the reliability and call quality of a real phone line with the amazing features of the state-of-the-art IP PBX phone systems. And its called The MetroCentrex PBX Service.

Take 30 seconds and register your Canadian cell number so that telemarketers can’t call you! This is easy to do and is worth passing on to your family and friends. Cell phone numbers go public on September 1st 2009. Which means that all cell phone numbers are being released to telemarketing companies and you will start to receive sales calls.

Use the “Do Not Call List Canada” web site and register your phone there. Remember it is only on the DNC list for 2 years, you will have to update it. Put a reminder in your computer’s calendar.