How to choose a new phone system: choosing a digital phone system

Digital phone systems have been the mainstay of communcations systems since the 1970s, replacing old analog phone systems with the use of digital electronics. Digital phone systems are an established and accomplished technology, offering a proven blend of guaranteed voice quality and user applications, with economies of scale and mass production behind it to remain still the most popular type of phone system sold per number of systems, despite the advance of disruptive newer technologies such as IP phone systems.

Digital telephony was introduced to provide voice services at lower cost than old analog systems back in the 1970s, but was then found to be of great value to new network services such as ISDN that could use digital facilities to transfer data speedily over telephone lines. As a technology, analog translates your voice transmissions into electronic waves. Digital, on the other hand, breaks the signal electronically into a binary format, in which your voice transmission is carried over a wire represented by a series of 1s and 0s. To explain, old analog systems take the signal and because of poor lines or inferior equipment, might achieve a 30%, 50% or 70% signal, with appropriate drops in quality. With digital, you don't get this - it's either there at 100% or it's not there at all.

So, digital technology breaks your voice signal into binary code (that series of 1s and 0s) and transfers it to the other end where another device, ie a phone, takes those numbers and reassembles them into the original signal. This process leads to a number of features. One large advantage of digital is that it knows what it should be when it reaches the end of the transmission. That way, it corrects the errors that may occur during this data transfer. What does all that mean to you? Clarity. But digital is more than that; The nature of digital technology allows it to cram many of those 1s and 0s together into the same space an analog signal would use. That means more telephony features can also be crammed into the digital signal.

To illustrate, compare your simple analog home telephone with a digital telephone at the office. At home you have mute, redial, and maybe a few speed-dial buttons. A business phone, on the other hand, is loaded with function keys, call transfer buttons, and even voice mail. These are an example of the increased functionality that a digital phone system can give you which an analog phone system cannot give you. Here are some more:

Computer telephony integration

A digital phone system gives users the computer telephony integration that analog phone systems lack, ie making a call by clicking your contacts in outlook etc.

Seperation of voice and data

Some people like to just maintain one network and for those people, an IP phone system is the most sensible choice. But, other people prefer to keep their networks seperate - and for these people a digital phone system is the sensible choice.

Digital phone system over CAT5

One possible source of confusion when thinking about a digital phone system is that digital phone systems do not have to be carried over BT cabling. It is perfectly possible and reasonable to carry a digital phone system over the CAT5 IT cabling in your office: CAT5 cabling is, after all, a higher grade cable than BT1308 cabling.

Previous: Choosing an IP phone system
Next: Choosing an analog phone system

Next Steps:

Telefonix ...SMB to PLC!

For the small business, value solutions for multitasking employees.

Cloud Telephony ADSL2+ ISDN30

For the medium sized company, solutions to help you grow

50 User Avaya System Avaya Video Conferencing SIP trunks

For the enterprise, best of breed solutions to forge ahead of the competition.

Avaya Server Edition VMWare Virtualisation Managed Datacentres