For those of us who were around in the mid-1970s, the idea of a telephone switchboard – or at least the old phone company - may be forever tainted by the “Saturday Night Live” skit in which Lily Tomlin, as a switchboard operator, randomly disconnects calls and infamously declares, “We don’t care, we don’t have to... we’re the phone company.”

Thankfully, the last 30 years have brought switchboards into the electronic age, and through PBX (Private Branch eXchange ) technology, many businesses no longer rely on telephone companies (or their operators) to complete many of their calls. Instead, many companies use internal telephone switchboards, known as IP PBX systems – the successor to PBX systems – that use IP technology whenever possible to deliver voice calls.

PBXes started out as internal company switchboards that required operators to manually direct calls from one person to the next. By the 1980s, manual switchboards had largely been eliminated, replaced by automated switchboards, which performed the same function but did not require an operator to manually route the call.

Instead of routing calls through old four-wire PSTNs (public switched telephone networks), modern PBX solutions use the Internet protocol to exchange information. Moving to IP networks has greatly expanded the functionality of PBX systems; instead of being restricted to the office, users are now able to work from virtually every corner of the globe and still make full use of their network’s PBX features.