Do You Require Power Over Ethernet (PoE) for Hosted PBX Solution?

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The differences between VoIP hosted PBX and traditional telephony solutions are as extreme as night and day, with the hosted PBX offering the far superior option. A hosted PBX solution is much more cost-effective, easier to manage, and allows for increased telecommunications.

However, there are certain areas where the traditional telephony option does seem more beneficial as compared to PBX solutions. While hosted PBX technology evolves to make the gaps smaller, traditional telephony does still offer services that PBX solutions fail to consider.

#1: Seemingly Trivial

The first difference between the traditional telephony service and hosted PBX solutions seems to be a trivial point; however, it can make a great difference when dealing with a particular set of circumstances. This issue is the fact that traditional telephony solutions are completely energy independent. That is to say that a traditional telephony service gains its power from the same outlet as a person’s computer or other electronic devices. A telephone uses power from the same cables used to connect to the telephone grid, which means the traditional telephone will remain operative even in the case where power to the office is cut off.

Why does this matter at all?

Well, on one hand it gives people peace of mind knowing that the telephone will remain operative in the case of a disaster; however, the PBX solutions operate on batteries and will run out of “juice” in time. Considering the amount of natural disasters constantly occurring, the significance of a durable line to the outside world cannot be overrated.

Of course, the chance that you will need to use a traditional telephone in the case of a natural disaster is small. In these disaster situations, mobile phones cover the best-case-scenario and are noted as the most effective option for each office worker. This is due to the fact that most employees have mobile phones and are unlike to be completely removed from signal towers in the event of a store.

Unfortunately, significant natural disasters have the ability to knock out both power lines and cell towers. If the Internet access is available via an underground cable, then the business environment will be protected by a generator and/or UPS. This will increase the chance of survivability if the Internet connection is good.

#2: Assisting The Day-To-Day Tasks

There is another more commonplace and immediate reason why a person would not want their telephones to be disconnected in the case of a power outage – the ability to maintain availability and access for the sake of customers. Yes, that’s correct, while you may be considering disaster preparedness and ensuring phones connect to the outside world in the case of a store, for the majority of us the ability to keep phones operation is to ensure that there is more uptime for customer service.

If you ran a business that is dependent on maintaining open phone lines regardless of what is happening in the outside world, then the autonomous nature of landline telephone services may be highly appealing.

The good news is that companies can experience this type of autonomy by using hosted PBX system solutions, particularly if you opt to use the Power Over Ethernet option.

What Is Power Over Ethernet?

Power Over Ethernet refers to a system where VoIP handsets are connected to the hosted PBX service utilizing the same Ethernet cables connecting the phone line being used by office staff to surf the web and share files in the cloud. Utilizing this PoE technology allows the Ethernet switch to provide the current required for handsets to send the same data Ethernet connection; thereby, you will not need to operate with a separate power supply for the handsets.

Unfortunately, there is one disadvantage to the PoE connection in that these switches are typically for more expensive. Moreover, they tend to be a single point of failure for all connections to them if the power modules fail. So, you should consider whether you want to risk tolerance and your needs when opting for the PoE connections.

However, at the end of the day, this option does guarantee uptime on the telephone lines as compared to the traditional telephony service.