What is a hosted PBX/PABX and how does it work?

Are clients, partners and prospects constantly calling your mobile? Or the one office phone on your reception desk? 

That's a good problem to have. It means you're bringing in more business than only you can handle. But ignore the problem, and you'll start losing all those callers. No one wants to phone your business only to be told to hang up and call another number.

Thankfully, there's a solution: Hosted PBX

What is a hosted PBX/PABX?

Private Branch Exchange (PBX) and Private Automatic Branch Exchange (PABX) are both terms for a phone system. A hosted PBX/PABX refers to a phone system hosted by a phone provider. So, if you come across the term "hosted phone system, " it means the same thing.

What is the difference between PBX and PABX?

The A in PABX stands for "Automatic, " which refers to a phone system that automatically routes calls. The distinction between PBX and PABX goes back to the days of phone systems with manual switchboards. With these phone systems, switchboard operators had to physically plug lines into the correct extension to route a phone call. The advent of automatic electronic switching made manually operated phone systems redundant.

Today, Private Branch Exchanges are all automatic, so the terms PBX and PABX are interchangeable when used to refer to a modern phone system.

How does a hosted PBX/PABX work?

Hosted PABX works just like a standard phone system, except you don't have a physical phone system bolted to the wall at your office. Instead, the phone system resides in a secure Aussie Broadband data centre, so you're renting space on our phone systems.

 A hosted PBX/PABX phone system utilises cloud servers to deliver your calls over the internet. It is a private telephone network that connects all the phones within a company to each other by using digital networking protocols (IP). See our diagram below to find out how Aussie Broadband's hosted PBX phone systems work.

Diagram demonstrating how hosted PBX works

What are the benefits of hosted PBX/PABX?

Cloud-based hosted PBX phone systems offer several benefits to businesses:

Cost-effective: You don't need to worry about the cost of installing or maintaining a physical phone system - Your hosted phone provider takes care of that for you.

High-quality calls: A hosted PBX phone system uses Voice over IP (VoIP) technology to offer crystal-clear voice calls, so you never miss a thing on the other end of the line.

Advanced features: Hosted PBX phone systems offer a feature-rich call management system. Handy features like call parking, virtual receptionist, and voicemail-to-email make them a powerful productivity enabler.

Simple management: Your hosted phone provider generally manages the system for you, so you don't have to stress about technical difficulties.

Redundancy: If the power goes out, you can use redundancy to maintain communication with customers.

Supports multiple business locations: Since they're hosted in the cloud, hosted phone systems aren't tied to a physical location. As long as you've got the technology to access your phone system (see below), you can access it from anywhere there's an internet connection. A hosted phone system's portability makes remote work and doing business on the move a breeze.

Works on multiple devices: With softphone capability, you can access your phone system through a softphone app on your mobile phone, tablet, laptop or computer.

Scalability: Growing your team? Add existing numbers to your phone system, and they can get on the phone straight away.

Get a hosted PABX phone system for your business.

Whether you're looking to update your old phone system or growing and need one for the first time, we can help.

Head over to our voice plan builder, where you can customise the perfect phone system for your business. There, you can select the number of handsets (phones) you'll need (1 handset = 1 phone number). Those handsets can be from our extensive range of physical phones or softphones that allow you to make and take phone calls from a computer or smartphone. You also have the option to add softphone capability to physical phone handsets. From there, you can add accessories that make calls more comfortable and a dedicated voice nbn® service that ensures your phone system never competes with your business internet for bandwidth. Once you've customised your phone system, you'll get an instant quote.

If you'd like to learn more about hosted PBX phone systems, contact our team of 100% Australian-based business phone specialists. You can call them on 1300 480 905 or contact them via our website.

Tags:BusinessHosted PBXPhone systems