It might be time to chuck out your old PBX-based telephone system. We have and we are extremely happy with the results. The thing is, we wanted a solution that would be either low-cost or free and would allow us to make best use of our existing Internet connectivity. We knew that we were bleeding cash on our ISDN-lines; each phone bill was another stark reminder that we were just throwing away many hundreds of pounds every quarter. Enough was enough and the old box on the wall had to go.
We chose 3CX (www.3CX.com) because it was free, Windows-based and therefore very easy for all the team to administer. It natively supports SIP trunks and we arranged these from our VoIP provider Sipgate (see my previous blog “Getting into those SIP trunks…”). I should point out that the free version has a cut-down feature set but this is still a very tractable and system.
The free version has some really cool features, and this includes support for remote extensions. This means that you can configure a VOIP handset (or a softphone on a PC) to connect into the 3CX phone system from any internet connection, allowing you to work from anywhere and appear to be sat at your desk in the office. All calls from the remote extension are routed through the office and are charged at the same rate as normal office calls, regardless of location. This feature can be notoriously difficult to configure on traditional phone systems but 3CX have made it extremely easy all that is required is a few port forwarding rules on the firewall. The free version gives you access to community based forums containing all the information you will need to setup configure and maintain your system.
But 3CX obviously make their money if you upgrade to the paid-for version for a one-time £500 licence fee – there is no need to buy upgrade insurance or any of the other myriad costs that are a feature of many software systems these days. That said, since most companies want the peace of mind of a support agreement for their business critical phone system, this can be purchased for around £150 a year direct from 3CX; this is incredibly cheap when compared with the support charges made by other mainstream VoIP providers. In any case, you get to unlock some very great features such as call queuing and an integrated fax server. Another really compelling feature is “branch bridging”; this allows you to easily interconnect two or more sites, regardless of location, and the phone systems then interact as if they are on the same LAN. This means that if you have an international office in Spain, for instance, you can seamlessly make calls between sites completely free of charge. Also, least cost routing rules can be established, so for example, if you are in your London office and need to make a call to Spain, this call can be routed via the Spanish office at the cost of a local/national Spanish call instead of at international dialling rates from London.
We run our 3CX system on a virtual server that contains a number of our other server-based systems, but it could just as easily be run on any old Windows PC that you might have handy. The system is totally web-based and uses IIS, once again making it very familiar to those with Windows-centric skills.
Actually, at the time of writing I have just seen sight of the spec for the just released version 9 of 3CX and we will be upgrading to this very shortly since it has a SIP client for Android mobile phones and it supports a host of other features including video support.