Small-office telecom: from traditional answering services to smartphones, options abound.

• Author: Lovell, Wade
• Position: Telecom

At the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show we learned the telephone, netbook, office ethernet network, internet hotspot and smartphone have converged into a single device. With plain old, copper-based telephone service rapidly becoming a thing of the past, what telecom technology should the small-office practitioner turn to this year?

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The right solution depends on the size and configuration of your office, and the desired outward facing presence of your company.

Our firm moved to a live answering service more than a decade ago. Three years ago we found everything the live answering service had to offer--except the perky voice--in a virtual Private Branch Exchange (PBX), which helped reduce our annual telecom budget from $9600 to $6,000.

Our next telecom move came in 2008 when we installed a femtocell (a mini cell tower in a stylish white box) in our office. Most of our staff switched to our preferred carrier when their contracts came up for renewal. Why? With the femtocell ($100), we pay for unlimited service ($26 per month). When the staff is in the office, all of their cell calls are routed through the femtocell and they are not charged for any minutes on their smartphone.

In August we will complete our conversion to rely entirely on smartphones and I expect many offices with under 25 employees will follow suit. Eliminating the PBX will cut our office and cell phone services cost from $6,000 to $3,600 for five employees, but will increase our annual equipment cost from $150 per employee to $250 for a net savings of $1,900. This assumes the company owns the equipment and pays for 100 percent of the services.

The old PBX and its new hosted, virtual or cloud cousin offer an extensive list of features. For offices with only lour telephone numbers and eight or fewer extensions, off-the-shelf telephone systems offer the following features:

* All-digital voicemail system with automated attendant.

* Up to eight individual mailboxes with separate greeting messages.

* 100-minute total recording time (long recording mode).

* Time-date stamp.

* Remote access with voice prompts.

* Call transfer, message transfer, deliver message and auto message delete.

* Call waiting/caller ID.

* 50-station caller ID memory and dialer.

* 100-station phone directory and dialer.

For offices with nine to 19 extensions, a voice over internet protocol hosted PBX is an elegant solution. Add a broadband connection and you will have a complete office...