Tuesday 19 January 2010

Small Telephone Systems Versus Multi-line Business Phones

By Alex Tipu

It is very important to keep up with the current advancement in technology whenever you plan to start up a business. It is very important for you at this stage that you take wise decision of investing in reliable and inexpensive business telephone systems and the telecommunication network for your business. Most of the small businesses decide to install the cheapest multi-line business phone in the market. There are some things that you must consider before you end up making a wrong investment decision and lose your money.

In most of the multi-line business phones voicemail, caller id, call waiting id, 3 way calling and intercom are the greatest attractions. All these phones have an integrated key system unit or KSU, which makes them an individual phone a complete telecommunication unit. All of the line interface and processing data for telephone and call, respectively, is carried out by the KSU or the intellect. All this ensures that the functions of this phone system are satisfactory and profitable enough for every small business. With the passage of time, when you use these systems for some time, you realise that these systems have some drawbacks.

Mostly, these units have a "KSU-less design" tag on them, which possess as a great distraction. These tags are responsible for misleading the consumers as they believe that it is a sign of their being cost-effective and inexpensive. The reality is that all these KSU units act as a line interface, which stops all the connections at the doorstep. This is a very big flaw when you are interfacing your multi-line phones with telephone company connections. As all these units work on their own as business telephone system, they all need direct lines to the telephone connections.

Moreover, every single unit need to have up to 4 pairs of wires or an equivalent standard cat5e cable because all multi-line phones can have up to 4 lines. With the expansion of your office network, more phone units will be needed, so you will have to add up more cat5e cables. Another drawback is that so many cables will make the network too much complicated, when they are cluttered on the floor, which might lead to major power breakdown within the framework.

On the other hand, single line telephone systems have separate Key System Units with every single set. In addition, one pair of wires is used with a single telephone line. By having an out-and-out KSU unit, a single interface point is required for the telephone line connections. Most systems require only a single pair of wire for a connection with an extension phone. This means that you can cut noticeably on the cable networking costs by splitting a single Cat5e cable into a maximum of 4 single handset jacks. When you add more phones to your network, it becomes hugely cost-effective.

As the format of the wiring is similar, it is very simple and easy to convert it into a larger network with just a few cable drops in the new office area. However, it becomes very difficult to do so in the case of a multi-line business phone networks. It is quite possible that you will have to disconnect your whole network if you want to upgrade or expand your network.

However, if you need 4 or less extension phones and peripherals lines, the multi-line business phones are the best option. It is a very good option for small businesses and it has more benefits than that of a single line phone.

My own advice to you is that you should initially install a single-line phone and a small business telephone system. It might seem a bit costly in the beginning, but it will be worthy for you when your business will expand.

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