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Business Telephone Lines & Business Calls

As a business owner or manager, you may be confused about which types of telephone lines you need for your offices. If you trawl the internet, you will probably end up very confused! Look at your existing phone bill and you may still be none the wiser!

This page provides a simple explanation and costs of the types of telephone lines you may use in your business. If you need to order new business phone lines, this is an excellent place to start. explore this site further for various Communications Insider Secrets.

Business calls and line tariff

We will take time to talk to you about your business and recommend and deploy the correct type of business telephone lines and business calls package for you – we will also ensure that your business calls and line tariff is ultra-competitive and that your new business phone lines are delivered by a tried,  tested and reliable phone line provider – you can rest assured that you will receive quality and excellent value for money.

If you don't need to order new business phone lines as you already have them installed, we can take over your existing lines at lower rates.

We will analyse your current business phone bill and also attend site if required to identify what business lines are being used for what purpose. Sometimes just by performing this simple task we have saved customers thousands of pounds! We have designed a free guide for you to help you reduce your phone bill – click here to request your free guide entitled 21 EASY WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR OFFICE PHONE BILL- Insert 'Free Guide' in the subject.
 
Business line provider

Most telecoms suppliers these days tend to resell business phone lines themselves as they earn greater profits this way. The problem with that is that they have an agenda from the outset.

We are different – we will recommend a telecoms carrier that is best for your business and not best for our pockets! Also, we will not recommend long-term contracts and bundled call packages – just transparent excellent value business lines and calls.

Here is a brief summary of what is available. Note the lead-times are the same for everyone in the UK so don’t be misinformed by eager sales people!

Analogue lines

These cost from £ 89.99 for connection and £ 12.21 per month for line rental.

Known as PSTN, you will probably need at least one of these business lines for your broadband connection. Lead-times are 6-10 working days (plus allow another 6-10 days for the broadband lead-time).

If you are having a very small basic telephone system, you could also use multiple analogue lines for your main connection for voice calls.

BT offer feature lines which are analogue phone lines networked together at the BT exchange so you can transfer calls between them without having a proper telephone system. These are OK for ‘start-up businesses’ but are normally ‘out-grown’ and expensive once you need more than 3 or 4 telephone extensions.

Digital telephone lines

We would guess that 90% of businesses have digital telephone lines -  ISDN2 or ISDN30. With digital telephone lines you can see who is calling you with Caller ID and you can allocate lots of numbers for different things  - known as Direct Dial or DDI. You can also transfer, conference or divert incoming calls to external numbers.

Lead-times are nearly always one calendar month  - it is possible to order ISDN2 without DDI and get it installed with 2 weeks.

ISDN2 costs £ 299 for connection and £ 29.24 per month for line rental. Note this includes 2 business lines (channels). It may be possible to obtain free connection - please discuss this with us.

Each ISDN2e line (circuit) provides two channels (lines to you and me) for your business. You can add them together so if you need 6 phone lines, you would have 3 ISDN2e circuits 'auxilliary working'. Note, if you need 6 or 8 lines you should have ISDN30, not ISDN2e. ISDN2e always uses copper cable so it is widely available almost anywhere in the UK.

ISDN30 can be installed free of charge if you agree a 3 year agreement. There will possibly be some other small charges for Direct Dial, Caller ID etc. Monthly line rental start at £ 14.33 per month. Note you must pay for a minimum of 8 lines.

One ISDN30 connection can support up to 30 business telephone lines on one connection box (NTE). The phone line supplier will not be required to site to install incremental channels. In other words, if you start with 8 channels and you need additional channels activated, you merely have to place an order for the additional channels with your phone company.

ISDN30 is often delivered on copper cable but there are distance limitations from the BT exchange so if your premises are rural or a long way from the BT exchange, the phone line supplier will be forced to install the ISDN30 on fibre optic cable. Note if there is no fibre cable nearby, they may charge you additional charges which you either agree to pay or you can re-order the services via ISDN2e. If you are in any doubt, we suggest we order your new business phone lines on ISDN2e and ISDN30 simultaneously. ISDN2e can be cancelled once we know that ISDN30e can be delivered.

Note that ISDN30 delivered on fibre cable connects to your mains supply so you must include the ISDN30 line box (NTE) on your UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply).

Unlike analogue telephone lines, with ISDN, you do not get a powerfail circuit so you need a UPS for your telephone system otherwise your telephone system will not work as soon as you have a power cut!

On either ISDN2e and ISDN30, you can have 5 single numbers or 5 direct dial ranges (a direct dial range can have almost any number of numbers in it - in blocks of 10) or a combination of the two. You can use Direct Dial for individual people's extension numbers, direct number for departments or direct numbers for marketing campaigns (so you can recognise and measure calls coming in for those purposes - eg you may have a Yell.com number so you know a Yell enquiry is coming in).

VoIP, IP and SIP

It is now possible to use broadband or your existing data network for voice calls instead of traditional business telephone lines. This is still a new area of technology. Whilst we have installed SIP and VoIP for quite a few customers, it is CRITICAL that you are advised properly to avoid disappointment. One thing is clear – VoIP DOES NOT NECESSARILY SAVE YOU MONEY!! It is very useful for certain businesses – we suggest you talk to us.

VoIP stands for Voice over IP - IP is Internet Protocol which is the signalling language used by the internet and also used on most business computer networks.

SIP stands for Session Initiation Protocol. SIP is usually delivered over broadband and it is imperative that the correct broadband and router is deployed. It is also critical to use a SIP provider that has been tested and approved by your telephone system manufacturer.

See our seperate page covering VoIP, IP and SIP. Don' opt for a SIP offering just because the provider is the cheapest phone supplier.

Hosted IP Telephony

You can now have a telephone system hosted for you (known as hosted PABX or PBX). This means you no longer need a telephone system in your premises or telephone lines. We can offer hosted solutions and they can be worth considering in certain circumstances. However, you should not consider a hosted solution just to save you money – we suggest you talk to us.

You won't pay any line rental for a hosted solution other than possibly the line rental for the analogue telephone line you use for your broadband connection which is how most small hosted solutions are connected.

Hosted providers normally portray themselves as the cheapest phone supplier - buyer beware! Ask our advice.

BT

The telecommunications market in this country is extremely difficult to understand and very fragmented. Years ago it was simple – BT was the only option. Then Mercury came on board and were able to undercut BT substantially on business call charges (not without major issues on some occasions).

In the last 10 years it has changed beyond recognition. BT has been forced to break itself up. BT Openreach is the company that own and maintain all the telephone exchanges, telephone lines, the infrastructure – this company operates all the BT engineers who install the phone lines and resolve the faults.

When a customer rings BT, they are now ringing BT Retail – these people take orders and nowadays they normally put customers straight through to outsourced sales companies called BT Local Business. These people are private franchisees who are highly targeted and mainly office based. Their job is to maximise sales and revenues of BT products. Orders are placed and then issued and managed by other parts of BT (sometimes from overseas call centres).

BT appear to offer competitive business calls and line packages. However, this is mostly not the case! Their clever marketing via Business Plan and other similar packages tempts customers by offering capped call charges amongst other things. However, they charge set up fees to compensate for this and the customer ends up paying more in the long run in the majority of cases. BT's tariffs normally only work out cheaper if every single call you make is a long call - naturally, this is very unusual as the average call duration in the UK is only 2 minutes.

BT seem to be less interested in Business Calls and Telephone Lines these days and more interested in Broadband and a myriad of other business services.

Public Telephone operators

These are big carriers such as BT, Cable and Wireless, Telstra, Thus, Energis, COLT, Opal etc. These companies actually have licenses to physically switch telephone calls around the UK and beyond.

They will have their own telecoms networks (ie cabling and switches) to varying extents but in almost all circumstances, when you order lines from these companies as a small business customer, whilst you are paying them for installation and rental and you are communicating with them directly on all matters, they will be buying the services wholesale from BT who in turn will install and maintain them.

We are partners with Telstra who are a Tier 1 carrier. You can normally be assured of a good quality communications product or service.

Switchless Resellers

These are facilitators. They don’t actually move telephone calls around – instead they buy minutes from one or more of the PTO’s above and re-bill them to you. Alternatively, they may also sub-contract their services or offer distribution and branding to telecoms companies like ourselves – for example, if we did this, you would get a bill from Connectwork.

This kind of company is often the cheapest phone supplier at first glance.

Cable companies

Examples are Virgin Media who were formerly NTL Telewest, Eurobell and SKY and Tiscali.

Our opinion….great for home broadband and TV packages – for your business….think again! There are some exceptions – for example Virgin Media can offer real value if you want pricing on leased lines or MPLS networks – these are dedicated internet connections with high speeds and service level agreements and these days are normally out of the price range of many small businesses.

Where does this leave Connectwork?

We offer a choice of all of the above depending on what is best for the customer. Furthermore, we regularly review our customers’ business phone lines and calls packages ensuring continued competitiveness and that our customers receive Excellent Value Business Telephone Lines and Business Communications.

We analyse a lot of business phone bills and we have yet to find a business customer where we have not been able to show a saving. That is why we are confident when we say that when we are the cheapest phone supplier, we are THE CHEAPEST PHONE SUPPLIER!!!

Call us for a chat or more information.