How To Choose a New Phone System: Your Existing Infrastructure

The state and quantity of your existing office infrastructure has a large role to play in your choice of system when buying a new phone system. Analog phone systems, digital phone systems, IP phone systems and a cloud phone system each have different capabilities, features and costs (discussed in subsequent pages), but the choice isn't as simple as that, it also depends on existing infrastructure. Here's why:

In the UK, businesses and offices come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from a small old fashioned office space which has seen relatively little infrastructure investment all the way up to a newly built office space that has all the latest cabling already in place for the new tenant once they move in. The first question to consider revolves around this idea, namely judging the state of your office in terms of the cabling needed to support your phone system. Because if you don't have much cabling and/or infrastructure in place, certain options may suddenly become more expensive than initially anticipated. Cabling for offices has changed substantially in the last 20 years.

20 Years ago - Just Telephony Cabling

20 years ago, life was much simpler. Back in the day, such things as laptops and PCs were relatively unknown, and your average British office just had telephone and electrical cablingm, and little else. Some companies had many telephones connected using this telephony cabling to a central "switch", a machine that provides the management of these relatively many connections to relatively few outside lines. Other companies had many telephones connected to many individual outside phone lines with no switch in between, again just using telephony cabling.

The cabling used in all these old offices is something known as "CW1308" cabling, but also known as "BT 1308" cabling. This cable type is comprised of 4 individual cables inside, in 2 twisted pairs of two. It is manufactured from 0.5mm copper and each of the pairs of wires is colour coded and loosely twisted together. This cable is a tried and tested type of cable, and is the same cable that today's BT engineer still uses if you have them install an extension. The twisted pair construction actually provides resistance to interference, its reliably small diameter means it is not unsightly, and over a long run in the office (ie beneath the floorboards), 50m can typically be easily achieved without any noticeable loss in sound quality. And 50m is more than enough to cover most offices. So, to recap, this CW1308 cabling is a economical and standard way to ensure a reliable voice connection.

If this describes you, ie your office has CW1308 cabling but no seperate IT network connecting computers to a central server, then your options are to either use an analog phone system or a digital phone system.

Then - Telephony and IT Cabling

But, things moved on. All of a sudden in the 1980s and 1990s, offices in the UK started using computers, and to use computers efficiently in a business environment, you need... a computer network (also known as LAN (local area network) or Ethernet). So this becomes a new, second, independent network of cables wired into offices, a data network connecting lots of computers at desks to a central server somewhere in a server cabinet through a whole new different type of cabling, also fitted under the floorboards: CAT5 cabling.

CAT5 cabling is the wiring in the floorboards or ceiling between your central server cabinet and the points that your desktop computer plugs into: it actually contains 8 wires divided up into 4 pairs of two, each pair twisted together. This CAT5 cabling is thicker and the cable has a higher number of twists per meter than CW1308 cable as it is required for the higher frequency IT signal.

With 2 different cable networks in the building, it wasn't too long before someone observed decided that this was probably a little bit silly because we can actually run both phones and IT off the CAT5 network. So this is exactly what happened, and IP telephony was born: carrying telephony signals over the computer network. VoIP technology is simply an extension of this idea: if you can carry telephony signals over the IT cables in the office then why can't you carry the same telephony signals over the wider world internet cabling?

Nowadays - Telephony Cabling, IT Cabling and Wireless Networks

Of course, not everybody works at a phone at a desk, and there are all sorts of situations in which, as a member of staff at work, it is imperative to carry a relatively "non deskbound" office phone around with you. For example hospitals, factories and warehouse situations come to mind. There are various ways of achieving this; you can either use the dedicated piece of mobile phone telephony software withing your new phone system to achieve this if your system has this feature, or you can have a DECT phone system which uses transmitters to provide coverage throughout buildings, or you can use a WiFi phone system to achieve the same end.

If this describes you, ie your office has both CW1308 and IT cabling, then your options are wide and you should be considering digital phone systems, IP phone systems or a cloud phone system. But, there is one important limiting factor to consider before making your choice: the number of IT network points that you have per person. Because, it's all well and good having this IT network, but you've also got to have enough places to plug both your phones and computers into.

Number of Network Points Per Person

Typically, most offices have either one or two network points per person, placed either in floorboxes (lift up panels on the floor) or on sockets on the wall with trunking (plastic guard) hiding the cabling that connects the point to the server room. If a company has two network points per person the choice is the widest: one point would be used for IT equipment and the other point for telephony. With each on a seperate point, voice quality is the highest. But, if a company has one network point per person then there are choices to be made:

• Add new cabling in the office and cable in a second point per person to be able to use an IP phone system; or
• Use a POE phone that plug into the network points to be able to use an IP phone system, with the computer then plugging into the back of the phone; or
• Stay with a digital phone system and use the BT1308 cabling; reserving the sole network point for IT; or
• Stay with an analog system and use the BT1308 cabling; reserving the sole network point for IT; or
• Equip desks with DECT or WiFi phones using a DECT network; or
• Rent a remote cloud phone system

Previous: moving office? the phone system checklist
Next: choosing an IP phone system

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