Concept
Business telephone system
Related concepts (21)
Interactive voice response
Interactive voice response (IVR) is a technology that allows telephone users to interact with a computer-operated telephone system through the use of voice and DTMF tones input with a keypad. In telecommunications, IVR allows customers to interact with a company's host system via a telephone keypad or by speech recognition, after which services can be inquired about through the IVR dialogue. IVR systems can respond with pre-recorded or dynamically generated audio to further direct users on how to proceed.
Voicemail
A voicemail system (also known as voice message or voice bank) is a computer-based system that allows users and subscribers to exchange personal voice messages; to select and deliver voice information; and to process transactions relating to individuals, organizations, products, and services, using an ordinary phone. The term is also used more broadly to denote any system of conveying a stored telecommunications voice messages, including using an answering machine.
Telephone exchange
A telephone exchange, telephone switch, or central office is a telecommunications system used in the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or in large enterprises. It interconnects telephone subscriber lines or virtual circuits of digital systems to establish telephone calls between subscribers. In historical perspective, telecommunication terms have been used with different semantics over time. The term telephone exchange is often used synonymously with central office, a Bell System term.
Mitel
Mitel Networks Corporation is a Canadian telecommunications company. The company previously produced TDM PBX systems and applications, but after a change in ownership in 2001, now focuses almost entirely on Voice-over-IP (VoIP), unified communications, collaboration and contact center products. Mitel is headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, with offices, partners and resellers worldwide. In April 2018, the company announced it had been bought by an investor group led by Searchlight Capital Partners.
Caller ID
Caller identification (Caller ID) is a telephone service, available in analog and digital telephone systems, including voice over IP (VoIP), that transmits a caller's telephone number to the called party's telephone equipment when the call is being set up. The caller ID service may include the transmission of a name associated with the calling telephone number, in a service called Calling Name Presentation (CNAM). The service was first defined in 1993 in International Telecommunication Union - Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) Recommendation Q.
Primary Rate Interface
The Primary Rate Interface (PRI) is a telecommunications interface standard used on an Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) for carrying multiple DS0 voice and data transmissions between the network and a user. PRI is the standard for providing telecommunication services to enterprises and offices. It is based on T-carrier (T1) transmission in the US, Canada, and Japan, while the E-carrier (E1) is common in Europe and Australia. The T1 line consists of 23 bearer (B) channels and one data (D) channel for control purposes, for a total bandwidth of 24x64-kbit/s or 1.
Telephone call
A telephone call or telephone conversation (or telcon), also known as a phone call or voice call (or simply a call), is a connection over a telephone network between the called party and the calling party. Telephone calls started in the late 19th century. As technology has improved, a majority of telephone calls are made over a cellular network through mobile phones or over the internet with Voice over IP. Telephone calls are typically used for real-time conversation between two or more parties, especially when the parties cannot meet in person.
Voice over IP
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for voice calls, the delivery of voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The broader terms Internet telephony, broadband telephony, and broadband phone service specifically refer to the provisioning of voice and other communications services (fax, SMS, voice messaging) over the Internet, rather than via the public switched telephone network (PSTN), also known as plain old telephone service (POTS).
Plain old telephone service
Plain old telephone service (POTS), or plain ordinary telephone system, is a retronym for voice-grade telephone service employing analog signal transmission over copper loops. POTS was the standard service offering from telephone companies from 1876 until 1988 in the United States when the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) Basic Rate Interface (BRI) was introduced, followed by cellular telephone systems, and voice over IP (VoIP). POTS remains the basic form of residential and small business service connection to the telephone network in many parts of the world.
Trunking
In telecommunications, trunking is a technology for providing network access to multiple clients simultaneously by sharing a set of circuits, carriers, channels, or frequencies, instead of providing individual circuits or channels for each client. This is reminiscent to the structure of a tree with one trunk and many branches. Trunking in telecommunication originated in telegraphy, and later in telephone systems where a trunk line is a communications channel between telephone exchanges.