Since PRIs provide blocks of 23 channels, there isn’t much room for flexible scalability. In addition, because PRIs are Circuit Switched, it’s sometimes a hassle once your company grows to a certain point; gaining multiple locations or a large number of employees. PRI circuits also don’t make sense for very small companies with 1 to 5 employees, since you’re purchasing 23 call channels for only 5 people.

With PRI’s retiring these are excellent alternatives.

The main alternatives to PRI Circuits are:

• POTS on Demand: POTS on Demand allows you to future-proof your business critical lines with a more cost-effective resilient solution
• Dynamic Integrated Services: although not as commonly used, since data requirements are much higher now, some providers are able to take an existing PRI circuit over a T1 and transmit data with it as well.
• SIP Trunking: This is a newer method of voice transmission that uses your existing data connection, and SIP capable PBX, to send and receive phone calls.Here is a comparison of SIP and PRI Circuits.
• Hosted VoIP: This is very similar to SIP Trunking, except phone calls are made over an internet connection.
• PRI Replacement Solution: Learn more about OneVoice’s PRI replacement solution that’s both cost-effective and can work with your existing hardware.

Now that we can generally answer the question “What Is PRI?”, let’s talk about how the PRI is deployed.

The PRI is typically associated with a T1 line in the United States, also called a PRI Line or a PRI Circuit.  The PRI Circuit is a single cable (usually a T1) coming into your telecom room that can carry voice and data transmissions.

A T1 line consists of 24 channels. A PRI uses 23 of these channels (called b channels) to carry the voice calls and 1 channel (called a d channel) for signaling, or communicating, between a PBX and the voice network.  This is commonly referred to as a (23b + 1d).

The important aspect of PRI is that it is a circuit switched system.  This means that there is always an actual physical and dedicated channel for the communication to travel on.  This is different from Packet Switched system – which is the model that the internet and SIP Trunking is based on.

So we can better understand what PRI is, we also need to understand how it’s used and how customers are able to connect to businesses.

People are able to call businesses by dialing their DID (Direct Inward Dialing) number. The DID telephony number is just the actual phone number you dial, for example our main DID at OneVoice is 703-880-2500.

It’s not uncommon for businesses to have 50 DID numbers on 1 PRI Circuit. In other words, your business can have 50 different phone numbers, 1 for each employee of the company, all coming across a single PRI Circuit. As long as you don’t have more than 23 people on a call at the same time, this is a perfectly viable option.

In the event that your company continues to expand and you do require more than 23 simultaneous phone calls, your only option for expanding your existing PRI circuit is to purchase an additional PRI circuit. This purchase will provide 23 more channels for communication transmission.