What is a good rule of thumb to use when estimating how many external lines a client would need for their phonesystem? I know this depends on how they all are using the system for ..etc but in a plain jane setup where users are basically calling out, no fancy ivr ...etc what is a good ratio. Everything is regular office use ..etc the marjority of calling is done between offices...(these three and other locations soon to apart of this system) What I have in this scenario is 16 users spread across three small offices each which had their own keysystems with outside lines and to me it seems like they had way too many lines for their needs. We are going to consolidate these systems down to one central asterisk pbx. Right now they are setp with:
Office 1) 4 users -> 4 outside lines solo key system
Office 2) 9 users -> 4 outside lines solo key system
Office 3) 4 users -> 4 outside lines solo key system
I would like to reduce this by 4 lines to support all 16 people. Thoughts? Should I keep all 12 lines ?
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It totally depends on your situation. I have a warehouse with 150 phones and about 7 concurrent calls at any time. At another location there are 100 phones and around 75 conccrrent calls. In a typical office situation, I see normally 25% usage. But you really need to look at how the business works instead of making a general statement.
The ratio is dependant on the business and also the phone manufacturer that you use. Equipment manufactures use different ratios from each other. So an AVAYA ACS has a card that is 3X8, 3 Co Lines and 8 extensions.
One rule of thumb for analog verses digital is when you exceed 12 analog lines the cost for a digital circuit such as a T1/PRI circuit is justifiable.
Another rule of thumb is the number of DID circuits. For every block of 10 DID numbers you will usually have one DID circuit, but usually a minimum of two circuits with the first block of 10 DID numbers.
Do you have any data connectivity between offices? Are the offices close to each other? If so, you could install a single T1/PRI at sight A, then have calls routed over the data connection to the other sights.
Based on your current environment I would just reduce each sight by 1 line if you really need to cut the costs down.
Kindest regards,
Joel_Sisko
The other thing to realise is that if you are putting in a VoIP solution, you only need POTS lines for the inbound calls. Create an account with an ITSP and send all of your outbound calls as VoIP to this provider. Only requiring lines for inbound calls will reduce the number of lines you will need.
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by: dwright1542Posted on 2005-09-07 at 11:52:42ID: 14839234
For typical office use, we have always implemented a 1/3 - 1/2 scheme for our installs. YMMV. However, with 10+ lines, it may be worth purchasing a T1, which will make your hardware and implementation much simpler / cheaper.
-Darren