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First Office Systems Ltd
14-16a Albion Road
Tunbridge Wells
Kent TN1 2NH

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First for Business Telephone Lines and Call Packages

Business telephone calls and line packages

As a business owner or manager, you may be confused about which type of  business 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!

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

We will analyse your current telephone bill and also attend site to identify what phone 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: http://www.firstoffice.co.uk/eshot/46/21-Easy-ways-to-reduce-your-office-phone-bill/

Most competitors these days tend to resell telephone 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 carrier that is best for your business and not best for our pockets! Also, we will not recommend long-term contracts and bundled packages – just transparent good value products.

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 telephone lines

You will probably need at least one of these 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 phone lines for your main connection for voice calls, although this is quite unusual these days.

BT offer feature lines, which are analogue phone lines networked together at the BT exchange so you can transfer phone 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 extensions.

Digital telephone lines

We would guess that 90% of businesses have digital phone lines these days (ISDN2E or ISDN30). With digital lines you can see who is calling you (Caller ID) and you can allocate lots of numbers for different things (Direct Dial). You can also transfer, conference or divert incoming telephone calls to external numbers.

Lead-times are nearly always one calendar month (it is possible to order ISDN2e without DDI and get it installed with 2 weeks).

VoIP/IP/SIP

It is now possible to use broadband or your existing data network for voice calls. 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.

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 on your premises. 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.

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 (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, 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 and often they are targeted on obtaining long-term contracts, which is certainly often not in the customer’s best interests! Orders are placed and then issued and managed by other parts of BT (sometimes from overseas call centres).

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 phone calls around the UK and beyond.

They will have their own networks (i.e. cabling) to varying extents but in almost all circumstances, when you order phone 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 product or service.

Switchless Resellers

These are facilitators. They don’t actually move 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 companies like ourselves – for example, if we did this, you would get a bill from First Office Systems.

This kind of company is designed for maximising profits.

Cable companies

Examples are Virgin Media (formerly NTL Telewest, Eurobell), SKY, 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 First Office Systems?

We offer a choice of all of the above depending on what is best for the customer. Furthermore, we regularly review our customers’ packages ensuring continued competitiveness and value for money.

Call us for a chat or more information.