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Brief History Of The PBX (Private Branch Exchange)

All but the smallest businesses demand more capabilities from their telephone service than those provided to consumers. They need many telephone lines coming in and going out. They have to be able to control which telephone receives an incoming call. These requirements motivated telephone companies to design telephone switching equipment that could be installed at the user’s location. This equipment is referred to as a PBX (Private Branch Exchange).

The original purpose of the PBX was to make it possible for businesses to control the routing of incoming phone calls. This capability is needed when many incoming calls may need to be handled by many different employees. The telephony technology of the time could only support this by taking the control functions that were normally performed by the telephone company central office and duplicating them at the business location.

It is important to remember that current phone technology is much more advanced than it was when the first PBXs were designed. These PBXs used the same basic equipment that was installed in the phone company’s switching centers. If today’s technology had been available then, a different solution might have been chosen.

Recently there has been a widespread recognition that user companies are generally not the best managers of their telephone equipment. Talented experts at the phone companies or third party vendors are often better equipped for this job, and these days they are frequently given it via outsourcing. Smaller companies have rarely tried to do this themselves.

The Centrex type of service use a different approach. These products provide services similar to those of a PBX using central office control and switching equipment. These are not new. Outsourcing has tended to increase the usage of this kind of product.

VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) technology has partially moved the flow of data for voice calls onto the Internet. This change has not removed the need for advanced call routing, though it may change where it is done. PBX facilities will continue to be very important for almost all organizations.