Basics and how they work

Hello again, in this section I am going to explain how phones and phone systems work, the difference between your home phones and business, and then I will break down all the systems I work with on a daily basis.

Part 1 - How phones and phone systems work

Ok, so a lot of people look at the phones at work, and really don't know or understand the difference between what they have their, and what they have at home. There are two parts to making a phone and there components work, first is the line coming in from Bell Canada or whoever your service provider is, then there is the actual hardware. The lines coming in from your provider is the same no matter where you are, or what kind of set up you have, and that means work or home. I am sure that everyone has driven around their city, and noticed buildings located through out with no windows, one door, and a large Bell Canada logo, this is called the Central Office or CO. All of Bell's lines come into this Central Office, and this is where it all starts. From the CO Bell will then run a line to the local switch box in your area. The local switch box is the various green metal boxes you see also located all through out your city, this is just basically a a smaller CO. From that green box another line is run, and this line is what actually comes directly into your home, or into your business office. The last part of the whole process is your physical demarcation point, and this is a little beige panel that sits on your wall, we call this in the business a bix panel. This is the last component to the process of the line coming in, and beyond this is where the differences come between your home and business telephone services.

Within your home you have several different jacks placed through out for you to plug your phones into, now all the jacks have seperate wires, but they are all connected to the bix panel, and run off of what we call a loop set up. I am sure at one point in your life you have picked up the phone, and noticed that you are listening to someone elses conversation, this is what happens when you are have this loop set up, all jacks are connected to the same line, and as long as you have multiple phones plugged in, everyone can be on the phone at the same time in the same conversation. In this diagram you will see a picture showing how this works.

Okay, so now that you know how your home is set up, let me explain how the office is set up, and the difference. In regards to the physical line coming in from Bell Canada, everything is exactly the same, but after the bix panel everything is being controlled by the phone system you have purchased. Take a look at the diagram below, and you will see how this works, and the further explanation will be below.

So as you can see that everything is the same, but instead of the line being run straight to the jacks, it is sent to the phone system, and this turnes it into a controlled digital set up instead of the standard analogue loop. Each jack is individually run to the system, and this is what allows the privacy of single lines, also all the other added features that your purchased system may contain, ie. voicemail, transfer, paging etc.

Ok, now you understand the difference between your home and your business, but unfortunately something has come up and I won't be able to touch base on basic phone systems until later.

Until then, I hope you learned something useful, and thank you for reading.