IP PBX

An IP (Internet Protocol) PBX (Private branch exchange) is a business telephone system designed to deliver voice or video over a data network and interoperate with the normal Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).

VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) gateways can be combined with traditional PBX functionality enabling businesses to use their managed intranet to help reduce long distance expenses, enjoy the benefits of a single network for voice and data and advanced CTI features or be used on a pure IP system which in most cases give greater cost savings, greater mobility, and increased redundancy.

An IP-PBX can exist as a hardware object, or virtually, as a software system.

Function

Because a major part of IP PBX functionality is provided in software, it is relatively inexpensive and makes it easy to add additional functionality, such as conferencing, XML-RPC control of live calls, Interactive voice response (IVR), TTS/ASR (text to speech/automatic speech recognition), Public switched telephone network (PSTN) interconnection ability supporting both analog and digital circuits, Voice over IP protocols including SIP, Inter-Asterisk eXchange, H.323, Jingle (extension of XMPP protocol introduced by Google Talk) and others.

Features

(Features depend on system in place, some features require licenses or other software/hardware)

See also