From an IT and Telecoms background Sean Wheller is both an avid writer and passionate property investor. Amongst the many websites he founded is the first Property Investor Community based site in South Africa PropertyInvestorNetwork.co.za. On the IT front his passions include open source software and community. He chiefly supports Joomla and the future of self managed content websites. Through his web development company [TheWebDesignCompany.co.za], he helps small and medium size companies take control of their website content while significantly reducing costs of development. To learn more about Seans’ interests and businesses you can go to www.SeanWheller.co.za.

Phone systems are mission critical to any business. No matter what size a business is, no phones can means no business. Whether you are a mom and pop shop working from home, a small store or office that needs just a couple of phone lines, telephone services are your critical link to the world. The same can be said for data communications, a broken Internet connection can cost dearly, especially when a business is heavily dependant on email communications. Fortunately, most tele and data communications systems are fairly reliable and outages are not something businesses have to endure very often.

We're stating the obvious here, every business owner is aware of the vital role tele and data communications plays in their business. However, there is another aspect to these communications channels that micro and small businesses owners do not consider. It's an aspect that is possibly just as critical to the service itself. It's what we call the "presentation factor".

Most small or mirco-businesses operate on a standard POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) setup. Meaning they have one or two ordinary telephone lines. While this unsophisticated setup is extremely functional, it is clunky and bare bones at best. It does very little to enhance the "presentation factor" of the business.

If there is anything micro and small businesses have learnt from the Internet is that a good, well-designed and informative website has the potential to make a even a micro-business look like a medium or big business. It's the reason why the Internet is often referred to as "the great leveller". Micro and small business owners often neglect to realize that the "presentation factor" of their business telephone system has the same potential as a well-crafted website.

Advances in technology means that today's entrepreneurs have more options available to them. Using a more sophisticated phone system is no longer as expensive as it was a few years ago. Private Branch Exchange (PBX) phone systems are smaller, cost less and new voice/data technologies like Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) makes business from an infrastructure, operation and call cost perspective. In most cases these new age phone systems can reduce operating costs while they improve operating efficiency and give the micro or small business that professional big business "presentation factor".

In yester year, choosing a PBX phone system was a major decision for a business. Today, choosing a phone system is about as complicated as choosing a computer. Not a difficult decision for medium and larger businesses. While the phone system purchasing decision has gotten simpler it still remains a major source of confusion for most micro and small business owners. the reason is that independent business owners do not have the same access to qualified IT consultants as their bigger counterparts do. Micro and small business owners tend to be experts at what they do and do what they do very well. They don't have much time to focus on technology, how it works and what is best considered communications best practice. They're more engaged in the day-to-day working of the business and will get by with the standard POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) setup they know works. Especially when they are confused by technology.

Sound familiar?

If you are nodding your head right now then you're probably the right person to be reading this article. By the time you've finished reading this article we hope you will have a better idea of how to choose a phone system. You should also have a pretty good picture of how your phone system can help your micro or small business up the game to better compete with bigger businesses simply by improving the "presentation factor".

On a basic level, all you need is a separate extension and phone for each employee who uses a phone in the office. So what kind of service and equipment will you need? What should you be looking for? Here's a step-by-step guide on how to figure it out.

Start out by taking stock of your current situation and needs by answering the following basic questions:

• How many employees need their own phone?
• How busy are your phones lines?
• How many telephone lines do you need?
• Do you need a receptionist?
• Do you need voicemail for each employee?
• Do you want calls routed to people in remote locations?
• How many employees do you envision having in the next three years?

Answer these questions before you begin looking at phone systems. Most small-business PBX systems will give you the following basic features:

• multiple extensions
• multiple phone line connections
• local and remote voicemail pickup
• operator console
• call forwarding

These are standard telephony features. Most micro and small businesses would easily settle for a system providing just these features, if the price was right. While these features are a must have, they are something to write home about. We would suggest being more demanding. Newer phone systems will give you all this and much more for much the same price. Who does not want a bigger bang for their buck?

The trend in phone systems is towards what is called "Convergence". It's a fancy way of saying that telephone and computer network systems are merging into one infrastructure. The lines start to blur a little now, so bare with us as we diverge a little from telephones to computers.

Converged systems are most definitely the way of the future, so we must cover the convergence issue briefly as it makes sense to head in this direction from the start. This is a great peace of information to know because it means that we can remove more than half the phone system solutions in the market today. We call phone system that do not provide convergence "legacy systems". They are typically circuit switched and provide little or no integration between your computer network and telephone system.

The flip side of this is that while we have shortened the list of possible phone systems we can choose from, we may have actually complicated the choice. Now we must think of computer and telephone technologies all at the same time.

The reality is that the choice actually becomes easier because the only additional thing we are looking for in addition to the desired telephony features of a phone system is the ability for the phone system to also act as a router and hub, two core building blocks of a computing Local Area Network (LAN) that is connected to the Internet. The hub functionality can be fixed wired, wireless or a combination of both and enables office computers to be networked so that they can share resources and network devices like printers. The router functionality just enables the network to be connected to the Internet.

Micro and small businesses commonly use Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL) to connect to the Internet. A DSL can come in many flavors but the most common is the Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) which is available in a number of speeds. It's common to find ADSL in a micro or small business because this technology makes it possible to have both analog voice and data on a single copper pair. Which means that a business gets both a telephone line for voice or fax calls and a data connection to the Internet that is both always on and much faster than dial-up technologies. Line rental is often a little more expensive than a standard POTS line, but well worth it in terms of cost-effectiveness.

Here's where the two worlds of Telephones and Computer Networks collide in a way that simply transforms our thinking about what is possible.

Where yester years technologies meant that voice had to be carried on one type of infrastructure and data on another so that a business would have both a telephone network and a data network, today's technology makes it possible for voice to be converted so that it can be carried across the computer network as data. The technology that enables voice to be converted into data packets and transported over a network is aptly called Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

Internet Protocol or TCP/IP is the lingua franca of the Internet and a default protocol installed on all computers. The ability to convert voice into data packets that can be transmitted using TCP/IP means that businesses can use a single infrastructure for both their telephone and data networking needs. It's a huge advantage for micro and small businesses as they only need to invest in maintaining a single infrastructure. Cost savings can be significant.

Now that we've talked about "Convergence" you hopefully are starting to see a bigger picture. So, let's get back to choosing a phone system for the micro or small business.

What type of system are we looking for? Is it a phone or a computer networking system?

Actually it is both a phone system and a computer networking system. Let's discuss what such a system could have in order to meet the requirements of a micro or small business. There three basic capability requirements:

1. PBX or Telephony features
2. Computer Networking features
3. Routing features

Modern systems that support these requirements are commonly called VoIP PBX systems. They provide a rich set of telephony features, the likes of which we will cover shortly, ability to network computers and route data between the Local Area Network (LAN) and the Internet. Within these capabilities VoIP systems also provide the technology to convert voice and act as a gateway via which voice can be converted to and from analog or sinus wave signal forms to digital signal. Voice can therefore transverse the LAN and be routed outside the network via the Internet. As we previously discussed, most micro and small businesses will access the Internet by way of an ADSL connection. When the VoIP PBX uses an ADSL Line to for Internet access we call it a VoIP ADSL PBX.

At the start of this article we have already discussed the standard or basic telephony requirements. So let's extend this and list some of the features you can expect to get with such cutting-edge technology:

• Call pickup
• Call waiting
• Conference
• Call forward
• Do not disturb
• Night service
• Call hold
• Music on hold
• Redial
• Reminder call
• Speed dial
• Voicemail
• Shared directory

A VoIP ADSL PBX offers many VoIP Telephony solutions. A typical starter system will support connection of up to 2 analog POTS lines for standard fixed line telephone call services. It will also support connection of one ADSL link in order to provide connectivity to the Internet. System specs may vary, but a system for a micro or small business will ordinarily provide anywhere between 5 and 8 unique extensions with voicemail for employees. One of those extensions would could optionally be used as an operator consolve for a receptionist by using a more advanced telephone set called a "Feature Phone". Extensions may be connected to the VoIP ADSL PBX using fixed wires, wireless handsets (typically DECT), or a combination of both.

One of the key advantages of a VoIP ADSL PBX is that voice calls can be made using they fixed line telephone services, which everyone is already accustomed to, and the ADSL data connection to the Internet. Since a starter system would typically support to fixed analog lines it stands to reason that these lines could be used to make two incoming or outgoing calls concurrently. But how many concurrent calls can be made over the ADSL link?

The number varies. In practice the ADSL link is far more flexible and scalable than the fixed line voice path. It can therefore scale in call capacity in a way that fixed analog lines cannot and it is therefore reasonable to expect that many more concurrent calls can be made over the ADSL link. There are however some limitations.

The first limitation is the number of calls supported by the VoIP ADSL PBX on the ADSL connection. Starter systems will typically support up to two concurrent calls. This is defined by the number of SIP trunks the VoIP ADSL PBX supports. SIP stands for Session Initiation Protocol and is a signalling protocol, widely used for setting up and tearing down multimedia communication sessions such as voice and video calls over the Internet.

A VoIP ADSL PBX supporting two analog lines and 2 port SIP trunk can therefore capacitate up to four concurrent telephone calls. This is a major leap forward for micro and small businesses as they do not need to hire additional POTS lines. At most, if a business wanted capacity for 4 concurrent calls and already had a single ADSL Line, only one additional POTS line would be required. But even without an additional POTS line the business would have capacity for 3 concurrent calls over one twisted copper pair which is their existing ADSL line.

The immediate benefit is obvious, less infrastructure, fewer costs and increased capacity, but there is more.

Contrary to popular belief, VoIP calls are not like Skype calls. VoIP calls are about voice quality being the same as what people have come to expect from copper infrastructure. To achieve this quality the data packets that carry voice must be subject to a certain quality of service when travelling over the network, whether it be the LAN or the Internet. One way to understand the difference is to think of Skype Calls. The quality of a Skype Call can vary dramatically between calls and even intra-call. This is because the voice packets created when using Skype are not subject to any Quality of Service (QoS). The data packets reach their end destination by means of best-effort. There is no guarantee. This is often called Voice over Internet. VoIP is different because the entire path via which the data packets travel to reach their end point must guarantee a required amount of bandwidth so that the packets can travel between the two points with as little delay or latency as is possible. A data packet delayed or lost in a voice conversation can severely degrade a voice conversation.

Does this mean that VoIP calls will be of inferior voice quality? No, it simply means that the data carrier, usually an Internet Service Provider (ISP) must enable QoS on their network for VoIP data packets. Many traditional telecommunications operators and ISPs have enabled QoS and a new bread of converged telecommunications operators have emerged. Companies like South Africa's Vox Telecom are pioneering the VoIP industry in emerging economies.

Vox is a tier one voice carrier with inter-connects to all major fixed and cellular network operators inside South Africa. The company also has inter-connects with international telecommunications companies. Vox provides a range of VoIP ADSL products. Key to these products is the Vox VoIP ADSL Phone a home or single phone VoIP Gateway solution and the Vox ADSL VoIP PBX full business solution tailored to micro and small business needs.

One of the key differentiators between traditional telco operators and ISPs who have enabled VoIP on their data networks and this new bread of Converged Telecommunication company is that they often offer significant call savings for VoIP calls in comparison with fix line or cellular calls. Vox Telecom for example offers customers VoIP calls to cellular networks at averagely 16% cheaper than the if the same call had originated from a fixed line. Long distance national calls within South Africa are amazingly 23% cheaper. International call rates vary but are anywhere between 30% and 50% cheaper.

Converged telco's like Vox can do this because of the difference in costs and scalability offered by data networks as apposed to fixed or circuit switched networks. However, Vox Telecom has not stopped there. In addition to offering quality outgoing voice calls at discount prices, Vox Telecom can also afford to offer customer rebates for incoming calls. More about how this works can be found in this blog post on How come Vox Telecom can pay you money on incoming calls?.

The result is that Vox further reduces the operating costs for micro and small businesses by discounting the rebates customers are awarded for incoming calls from their already cheap outgoing call costs.

With this in mind, it simply makes sense for micro and small businesses to adopt technologies like the Vox ADSL VoIP PBX which is available from Vox Dealers such as PhoNet. The overall impact of using a Vox ADSL VoIP PBX such as that available from PhoNet not only makes business sense from an operating and financial perspective. The relatively cheap cost of a phone system such as the Vox ADSL VoIP PBX and rich feature set are guaranteed to dramatically improve the "presentation factor" of any micro or small business. The advent of the ADSL VoIP PBX can most definitely be compared to the carefully crafted and well designed website in its' ability to be the "great leveller".