An efficient and effective business phone line service is key to your business staying competitive and making a profit. But with all the technical jargon and acronyms it can be hard to work out which business phone line service is right for your business.
And while there are ISDN and PSTN phone line options to consider, there’s another solution you may not have thought about – the cloud!
What is the difference between ISDN and PSTN?
ISDN stands for the Integrated Services Digital Network, a digital network technology that carries and transmits voice, data, video and fax in a digital format. In Australia, ISDN services can either be a basic rate service, known as ISDN 2 or a primary rate service, known as ISDN 10/20/30.
ISDN2 (BRI – Basic Rate Interface) is the entry-level version and has two 64 kbit/s voice channels and one 16 kbit/s signalling channel that add up to 144 kbit/s.
ISDN10/20/30 (PRI – Primary Rate Interface) provides users with 10, 20 or 30, 64 kbit/s channels permitting for a maximum data rate of approximately 2 megabits per second (Mbit/s). Medium to large businesses usually use primary rate services.
Summit SIP Voice is a business grade voice solution. Suitable for plugging directing to your IP phone system, SIP comes with blocks of 10 lines, 20 lines or 30 lines. Find out more about Summit SIP Voice service here.
PSTN stands for Public Switched Telephone Network lines. With this dedicated service, each line has a unique phone number with the area code of its assigned telephone exchange. Despite the core network being almost entirely digital, PSTN is delivered to the premises via twisted copper pairs in analogue form.
While business phone line services using PSTN are similar in function to residential landlines, they are managed on less congested networks. Even though many businesses are still using PSTN as their business phone line service, there are limitations.
If your business is growing, your office will need to have more than one PSTN line. Installing multiple PSTN lines can become very expensive.
PSTN & ISDN will be phased out soon
As the NBN network is driving a switch from copper based voice services to services that run over broadband & data services, over the next 2-4 years PSTN & SDN will be phased out.
This means that traditional PSTN & ISDN users will be forced into switching to alternative VoIP based voice services. If you want to keep your PSTN Phone numbers, you will have no choice but to move to VoIP based service to replace your old voice lines.
Legacy PBX hardware will need to be replaced as PBX systems will need to be compatible with IP based voice services, or a cloud based phone solution.
Summit Business Cloud Phone Solution
Now you know the difference between ISDN and PSTN, it’s time to discover a more powerful, simple and intuitive business phone solution! When your business uses the cloud as a phone solution, you can forget about the technical jargon and acronyms.
Summit offers a simple, future-proof phone solution that easily scales when your business grows. Benefits to your business include:
- No more expensive line rental!
- Multi-site networking becomes simple
- Savings on your phone bill
- Free on-net calls between sites
- One number for multiple devices including iPhone, Android, Mac and PC
- NBN compatible
Your business also gets the latest equipment, maintenance and customer support from a local service centre.
Find out how moving away from ISDN and PSTN to the cloud can benefit your business. Talk to our friendly and helpful Summit Team Members on 1300 049 749.