Phone System Basics

Home Telephone Service

Most people are quite familiar with their home telephone service. Typically, a household has multiple telephones that share a single line. This means that if someone is on the telephone in your kitchen and you pick up the telephone in your bedroom, then you can hear their conversation. Likewise, if you would like to use the telephone, then you must wait until they have completed their call. These characteristics exist because:

Normal home telephone wiring is in a home run (star) or continuous loop configuration (see illustrations below)
Most home telephones are single line (i.e. they can only accommodate one incoming line)
Most households only subscribe to a single telephone line or number

Business Telephone Systems

Businesses have different requirements than home users. Most businesses need multiple telephone lines to handle more than one incoming or outgoing call at a time. Employees also need the ability to make calls to external parties as well as call other employees within the business. For example, front office personnel may need to make an outgoing call to a vendor or supplier, and they may also need to communicate with a manager in the warehouse. These basic requirements are solved by installing a business phone system.

A major difference between your home telephone and a business phone system occurs in the wiring configuration. Unlike home telephone service, the incoming line wiring for a phone system does not terminate directly at each telephone. The lines must first be connected to a processor or control unit and then extension/station wiring is run to each system telephone.

The processor contains the “brains” of the business phone system and provides the majority of its features. Some basic features include:

Providing users with access to multiple incoming/outgoing calls over multiple lines
Allowing users to intercom or call other users within the business
Providing users with features like transfer, hold, and conference

Current business phones systems also provide a variety of advanced features such as:

Group coverage
Call coverage
Voicemail
Automated attendant
Music on hold
Group paging
External paging
Access restriction