Sales Director
Finding a business phone line provider in the UK in 2024 can seem like a daunting prospect. Not only are there a plethora of providers to choose from, but there’s also a significant amount of technologies involved, each with its acronyms and jargon! In this guide, we look to demystify the world of communications, enabling you to find the best phone line and service for your business. If you’d prefer to speak than reading, please request a quote or use our live chat, and one of our telecoms experts will be more than happy to help.
Compare Business Phone Systems
Many of you will have landed here looking to find out who are the best business phone line providers, so here is a quick rundown of who we believe are currently out in front in a league of their own:
All business landline contracts, be that ISDN, PSTN or VoIP, will incentivise you to sign up for a longer-term agreement. It’s often in everyone’s best interest to have a longer deal as it means that all parties have the continuity of knowing the service will be in place for that period.
You can, of course, choose to have a shorter contract, as a reasonable number of our customers do, but what you gain in flexibility, you lose in discounts and service continuity.
What is right for you and your business will, of course, be unique, so when you speak with your T2k account manager, be sure to raise the topic of contract length so you can discuss what is best for you.
Business telecoms is a field dominated by acronyms and jargon, so we’ve created this next section to help you navigate our world as best as possible. Remember, if you have any questions and want to speak to a telecoms expert, please get in touch via phone or using the live chat feature of our website.
A business phone line is simply a landline used by a company rather than a domestic property. There are several different business lines to choose from, but with traditional PSTN and ISDN technologies being phased out by BT, most businesses are now switching to VoIP.
If you want to know more about the latest technology, be sure to check out another of our recent guides titled “What is VoIP?” where we explain everything you need to know about it.
A PSTN landline is what many people in the UK will think of when you say “phone line”. The public switch phone network to give it its full name was introduced in the 1800s and has been the foundation of UK communications ever since. Businesses have used PSTN services as their primary method of transmitting telephone calls and faxes for many years, with the network being re-purposed in recent times and used for internet access.
Millions of people and indeed businesses continue to use and rely on the UK’s PSTN some 140 years after it was first introduced, so the fact it is being turned off soon is nothing short of historic. As we will get into later in this guide, all businesses and consumers will need to move to another type of phone service before the big switch off; most expected to use VoIP via a cloud-based phone system such as our Horizon platform.
ISDN or integrated services digital network is a business telephone service that allows for the simultaneous transmission of voice, data and video on the digitalised circuits of the PSTN. First introduced to the UK on June 25th 1985, it was initially called Integrated Digital Access (IDA). It was used to extend the digital phone network to customer premises, allowing for faster data transmission than traditional analogue lines. In the mid to late ’90s, ISDN (ISDN2) was used by schools, businesses and other organisations to achieve faster internet speeds. At the time, most analogue dial-up connections would give you between 28kbits/sec to 33.6kbits/sec, whereas a single ISDN channel was up to twice as fast. Another significant benefit of ISDN over analogue lines for internet access was that a connection could be made quietly and in just 1 second. Compare that to dial-up modems, which would be screaming at you for 10-15 seconds; it was an altogether more pleasant experience.
Over time and as technologies developed and ADSL was rolled out, businesses looked to use ISDN primarily for phone services, as it allowed for many more concurrent calls over a single line.
ISDN2 is the lower capacity version of ISDN, which is capable of handling two phone calls simultaneously. Often the best choice for small businesses, it can also be upgraded to support 60 concurrent calls. One of the most significant benefits of ISDN and ISDN2 is that you can use a range of numbers (DDIs) to have multiple phone numbers connected to the same physical line.
Benefits of ISDN2
While there are undoubtedly significant benefits of ISDN for businesses, it’s not without its disadvantages.
Disadvantages of ISDN2
Despite the higher costs, ISDN and ISDN2e are still widely used by many businesses, although many are now switching to VoIP.
ISDN30 is the next step up from ISDN2, with the most notable difference being the number of channels you can scale up to. ISDN2 tops out at 60 channels, ISDN30 supports eight at the lower end, with each line capable of having 30 voice channels. I know 30 is half of 60, so how is ISDN30 capable of more? Unlike ISDN2, ISDN30 lines can be bonded so that you can have multiple ISDN30 lines going into the same phone system. Not only can ISDN be used for phone calls, but the data capacity allows for very high-quality video calls and even site to site communications. It’s perhaps easy to see why ISDN30 has been the connection of choice for larger businesses for some 20 years.
Benefits of ISDN 30
A VoIP phone service allows you to make and receive calls over the internet, rather than the old PSTN and ISDN networks. There are a few ways you can start using VoIP, which is best for your business will depend on your requirements.
Far from being merely a replacement for PSTN and ISDN services when BT turns those off in 2025, VoIP, like many other internet-based technologies, brings a diverse set of benefits to businesses, including:
With many companies to choose from for your telecoms, it can be somewhat challenging to determine which is best for your business. While we are, of course, biased, we think that for many companies, you’d be hard pushed to find a company better suited than us. Here’s why
T2k has been providing telephony services, including business phone lines, for nearly 30 years. We’ve built up a loyal customer base of companies that value excellence in customer service and want on-demand tech advice tailored to their business during that time. Many of our customers have been for over a decade, with a good number with us for much longer than that. We should point out that we’re not a substantial international business; we’re a small team of telecoms experts that work together to provide a service that is hard to beat. From our offices in Dorset, our sales, customer service, and technical teams look after a broad range of setups, from traditional and onsite VoIP phone systems through to cloud-hosted VoIP and connectivity,
Why T2k:
Having worked for T2k for nearly 25 years, it's fair to say that Lee is an expert when it comes to all things telephony and business communications. Overseeing the commercial side of the business, he has helped the company evolve and grow through the decades. In recent years, and with the advent of VoIP and hosted telephony, Lee has made sure that T2k is at the forefront of technological developments. With a firm interest in helping businesses navigate the world of telecoms, Lee is responsible for the majority of the content on this website.
