Setup for two phones in small office?

[koertkopbeen]

Hi, what is the solution for my small office? I basically have two offices. One is mine, the other is my secretary a couple of doors down. We share a internet connections.

I am looking for a basic telephone setup where incoming calls are first sent to my secretary, and she needs to put calls through to me and to internally call me from her office. Both phones must be able to call out independently.

I would prefer to avoid Telkom.

Any suggestions?
TIA

 

[killerbyte]

Hi, what is the solution for my small office? I basically have two offices. One is mine, the other is my secretary a couple of doors down. We share a internet connections.

I am looking for a basic telephone setup where incoming calls are first sent to my secretary, and she needs to put calls through to me and to internally call me from her office. Both phones must be able to call out independently.

I would prefer to avoid Telkom.

Any suggestions?
TIA

So you have to break it down into 3 parts:
1. VoIP Provider
2. PBX
3. Phones

1. Which VoIP provider you choose is up to you. If you want to keep costs down Afrihost's TopUp accounts are a good option.

2. When it comes to your PBX you have different options... keep it simple and go with your providers server, or get something like 3CX (which you can get someone else to setup for you and manage for a small fee), and even then with 3CX you can choose on-site or hosted. You have a range of license options but I would suggest the 3CX Standard 4 Sim calls license which is free. That gives you all the features of an enterprise PBX with little to no cost.
Some really awesome features of 3CX include a full feature app that means you can be "at the office" when you are no where near the office. The ability to hold video conferences with clients without needing Teams or Zoom. A full feature Digital Receptionist (IVR). Its a really great product which I love.


3. Since there are only two of you I would suggest the Yealink T31P. Its a very cost effective phone and one of my favourites. Want to spend a bit more? Check out the T33G, slightly fancier but not overkill for your small business.

 

[SauRoNZA]

Yeah as above a VOIP setup with a cloud hosted PBX would be ideal and least cost.

 

[mrafiq1]

I have recently set up a 3CX PBX with 5 extensions using AWS free tier as cloud server. This is really a cost effective solution. Easy to setup. You can do a search on Youtube where you will find step by step instructions on how to do this. Just remember, the 3CX license is only free for the first year. Thereafter it is +- $175 per year.

The only part you really have to pay for monthly is the SIP trunks (Phone numbers). You can use Dataphone who has great rates (R40 per month per number excluding minutes) or even Vox (unlimited calls locally for R 171 per month)

As mentioned above, you can go the Softphone route (which is an app on your Cellphone) or/and Actual Voip Handset. 3CX supports the Fanvil series of phones as well and you can pick up some good entry level handsets on Geewiz or Scoop for about R650 to R900.

 

[DeSLAM]

Get a Grandstream GS-HT-802 ATA, configure the two VOIP accounts from your VoIP Provider on the device, plug it into your fibre router, and just plug your normal analogue phones into it. Done.

VoIP on analog phones and not costly to do if you already have phones with RJ11 cables Just make sure all your RJ11 cables are no longer connected to Telkom and only to the ATA. And the ATA connected to your fibre router via LAN cable.