What Can I Do When Phone System Goes Down?

Companies have been using integrated business phone system for a long time; Of course, there have been several changes from the start of this technology until now. In terms of hardware, software, cost, scalability, functionality, and most other factors there has been development.

With all these alterations, phone systems just got better and better with time. This helps an organization in many ways such as with communication purposes, organization, efficiency, and growth. Thus when the unfortunate event occurs where your phone system goes down or is not working properly, panicking is inevitable. However, worry not because this article will guide you through the a to z of phone systems. They are also focusing on why they can go down and most importantly how to fix the problem.

There Are 5 Different Types Of Business Phone System.

Different systems will require different approaches to fix if the phone system goes down. So take a look below, and find out what is the business phone system that you are using at the moment.

1. Traditional PBX Phone System
2. IP PBX Phone System
3. Open Source Phone System
4. Hosted PBX
5. Cloud-Based PBX

Before hopping onto those matters, let us briefly explain what a phone system actually is. A phone system is essentially the networking and communication system inside an organization. It aids to keep people connected to each other and to support better communication throughout.

So Now, Let’s take a look one by one how to resolve the problems.

Here are some general steps you should process first before looking into the phone system itself.

First, Let’s take a look at the phone set:

1. Take a look if it’s just one phone down, or the entire business phone system goes down.

If it’s just one phone down, make sure you check the phone’s power and internet connectivity, or if it’s using a traditional line, make sure the rj11 head is connected to the phone properly. The last step is to check if the hardware is faulty. you may consider purchasing a phone on eBay if it’s an old phone set.

• check power
• verify cable connection
• test internet connection
• check hardware

2. Now go to the phone system side, make sure the power is plugged and the power button is on

It sounds like no brainer, but sometimes it is the power issue causing the entire business phone system goes down because someone just picks up the dropped pen under his table.

3. Check your internet connection.

There are much business starts switching over to IP Phone System, so the phone system relies on internet stability. Always check your internet connection before dive into the phone system troubleshooting process.

Different type of business phone system troubleshooting:

Traditional PBX Phone System

For the traditional PBX system, it is necessary to first find the root of the problem. Thus, the first step is to check the hardware and if anything is faulty there. If it indeed is a hardware failure, you can check on eBay for faulty parts replacement instead of changing the whole hardware. This will save you a lot of costs.

You must also check all the connections to this device and if they are functioning properly. A simple solution is to unplug the main chord and keep it that way for a minute before plugging it back again. In many cases, it works and in some this does not.

Call your PSTN provider to check if their service intermittence down? People may think PSTN lines are stable than VoIP lines, it sounds true but it because PSTN is there for so many years and it only transmitting voice. Nut internet can do much better, and using it everywhere, so people may think it may not stable as PSTN lines, and can you really tell last time your home internet goes down?

If it is the latter, contact your manufacturer for further help, if you are out of luck the manufacturer is no longer in business, here are two ways to fix it:

Find out the serial number  or model number of the phone system

Get  in touch with a good local technician who can help to diagnose the problem and replace the parts

Find the legacy parts on eBay, and fix it.

Or consider to replace the modem cloud-based phone system, I will explain why you should consider cloud-based more than anything else.

IP-PBX Phone System(Internet Protocol PBX)

As this is an internet protocol system also known as IP-PBX, this provided by manufacturers such as CISCO, AVAYA, GRANDSTRAM, you buy a full solutions along with hardware software and IP phone sets from one single manufacture, if this type of business phone system goes down, the most sensible thing to do would be to check the internet router connection and the Local Aare Network(LAN). After that, you should also check the IP phone. Is it just one that is causing the problem or is it the trio? In some circumstances, it may be required to change your internet router. In this case, you can turn off the router for a while before turning it back again, then wait and see if the problem is fixed. If the trouble persists then you must call your internet service provider for further assistance.

• Check Local Area Network:
• Test your gateways to see if it’s reachable.
• Check the DNS see if it can resolve domains.
• Test your internet service provider, see the internet is fine.
• Check your firewall, have you recently implement any firewall rules.

VoIP requires ports to be opened on 5060 and 5061, different VoIP provider may require different ports to be open, check your VoIP provider and let them work with your LAN provider.

Open Source Phone Systems

As this phone system uses high technology software, so I consider you are the best person who is maintaining this type of phone system for your company.

An open source phone system is good because it can really save money on purchasing IP-PBX hardware and software, you could download it from the open source community. It is not very hard to understand the basic concepts, but it’s really hard to change the source coding.

If an open source phone system goes down, the approach is almost the same as the IP-PBX system:

• Check Local Area Network:
• Test your gateways to see if it’s reachable.
• Check the DNS see if it can resolve domains.
• Test your internet service provider, see the internet is fine.
• Check your firewall, have you recently implement any firewall rules.

But if you are not the person who set this up, it is best not to meddle with it. The best solution is to contact the provider.

This sort of system operation requires a lot of knowledge to install and configure. If this phone system goes down, you need to trouble with yourself or ask the community for help. Only a tech guru or a tech-savvy person with experience in this matter may be able to fix it. This is why it is not suitable for small businesses, as this will be a costly procedure.

Hosted and Cloud-based PBX

The latest technologies, there is a lot of people who don’t understand the difference between hosted PBX and cloud-based PBX,  I just want to clarify it before we dive into the troubleshooting process.

Hosted PBX

Hosted PBX is running on one data center, the provider using their own software to build on a server to provide telecom service and host the service in one datacenter. It has limited scalability to the provider, because of the limitation of the technology.  It may be running as an active-standby scenario, it may be running as a server cluster scenario, but it’s not cloud-based.

Cloud-Based PBX

Cloud-based PBX, it has a lot of similarity to hosted-PBX, but the key point is it’s not in one server, the cloud solutions allow the server to go anywhere in the word. And store different component to different servers to fulfill the maximum redundancy. So the cloud-based business phone system is the one you should always consider because you may not troubleshooting in your office again.

Now, let’s back to our topic,  if you are facing either hosted or cloud business phone system goes down, first of all, check the internet connection and the internal LAN. If it is a common problem and you are able to locate it precisely, there are a few simple solutions to this.

If in case it is a latency problem, there are two feasible solutions. These are to handle high traffic through policy-based network management and bandwidth reservation or upgrading the router. You have to ensure a good router as the whole process runs via the internet. If it is causing jitters, which is a problem in audio, you can try using jitter buffers that will easily resolve this problem. Other general advice to fix the issue is to ensure good internet connection and use a configured internal network.

After doing the basic internal troubleshooting processes, you should always check your internet service provider’s status page if they have one, and call them immediately. You should not delay these procedures for a delay of any kind will lead to higher lag time and lower uptime. In addition, diverting the calls of your organization will result in a negative word and a bad reputation.

Conclusion

We hope this article has helped you better understand the various types of phone systems, their advantages and how they operate and successfully. Further explained to you the different problems regarding each and how to overcome them if the phone system goes down. The phone systems are an integral part of any organization and keeping useful information regarding that will come handy. You can do your part by correctly knowing and understanding the type of phone system you want to install. Also know all the problems that come attached to it, how to configure, which router would be ideal, etc. So always do your research beforehand, have your system up to date and always have your provided information prepared.