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Centrex is a contraction of central exchange, a kind of telephone exchange.
Use of Centrex
A PBX-like service providing switching at the central office instead of at the customer's premises. Typically, the telephone company owns and manages all the communications equipment and software necessary to implement the Centrex service and then sells various services to the customer.
However no switching equipment resides on the customer premise as the service is supplied and managed directly from the phone company's exchange site, with lines being delivered to the premises either as individual lines over traditional copper pairs, or delivering many lines multiplexed to the premises over fibre optic or copper links, eliminating the need to bring many individual pairs from the exchange to the premises. In effect, Centrex provides an emulation of a hardware PBX, by using special software programming at the telephone exchange, which can be customized to meet a particular customer's needs.
Centrex obviates the need to use separate exchange lines delivered to a site for use with a Key System or PBX. Instead, telephone extensions, called Centrex lines, are delivered directly from the local exchange to the user. Unlike with a conventional PBX, it is a simple matter to have extensions at different locations, yet allow them to function as if they were within the same building. Facilities such as Direct Inward Dial (DID), where individual extensions are offered a direct and unique telephone number for incoming calls, become standard features in a Centrex environment. Stations may also be part of a hunt group, allowing for automatic distribution of incoming calls to two or more extensions.
Types of Centrex Service
The Centrex customer is not restricted to using the features available to POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) customers, but can choose from a wide variety of special services and features. In fact, telecommunications companies generally offer numerous types of Centrex service, including "Packaged Centrex", "Centrex Data", and "Customized Centrex".
Packaged Centrex
Packaged Centrex customers could be offered a fixed set of features in package "A", a different set of features in package "B", and so on. These packages can be offered at a relatively low cost as little or no customization is permitted, minimizing the operational costs of programming and maintaining the services for the telephone company.Centrex Data
Centrex Data services can provide relatively low speed (56 and 64 kbit/s) data services utilizing the circuit-switched telephone network. Although they are now overshadowed by the internet and other data networks, Centrex Data services can offer very flexible and wide-reaching network configurations since connections can be made almost anywhere within the reach of the telephone network.Customized Centrex
Customized Centrex is the most flexible (and most expensive) Centrex service as it offers a highly customizable set of options that require specialized programming and troubleshooting skills to maintain. A typical Customized Centrex setup will allow 4 digit dialing between "locals" (perhaps even if they are located in different parts of the city), customized routing through the telephone network (such as Least Cost Routing or Time of Day Routing), and customized codes for invoking features.Example Applications
- Small business start-ups (growth and costs)
- Banks and financial institutions (branch offices/multi-departmental branches)
- Professional offices (reliability, connectivity and customer service)
- Local government (reliability, cost, multi-location)
- Hotels and guest houses (customer service)
- Colleges and Universities (reliability, cost, multi-location, growth)
- Temporary Locations where permanent PBX services are inpractical, such as a campaign office.
Services
- Call Transfer
- Call Divert – on no reply /on busy
- Call Waiting
- Three Party Conference
- Call Pick Up (Group)
- Ring Back
- Reminder / Alarm Call
- Last Number Redial
- Centrex Hotline (non-dialled connection)
- Centrex Warm Line (delayed Hotline)
- Centrex Hunt Groups, with optional bypass numbers
"Centrex"