It’s now possible for South Africans to create a smartphone-based PBX system in under eight minutes.

This is according to a survey of 100 PBX-over-GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) users who created NoPBX switchboards. They were all able to make their first switchboard calls using their new business phone number in 7,24 minutes or less.

Prior to the recent launch of the SA-developed NoPBX system, which seamlessly transforms mobile phones into low-cost, full-featured switchboards, corporates and SMEs would typically wait days or weeks for VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) or traditional fixed lines, handsets and infrastructure to be delivered and installed at their premises.

Aside from the relatively fast set-up NoPBX clients, the broad average set-up time for all NoPBX systems remains under 20 minutes (18,24 minutes to be exact), according to the survey conducted last week.

“Business owners have seldom faced so many hurdles and critical events outside of their core business,” says Anton Potgieter, MD of Trabel (Pty) Ltd, the Cape-based developers of NoPBX. “With so much background noise going on, it’s important to simplify as many routine business processes as possible.

“Being able to make business calls that reflect as such on the receiver’s side, just by setting up an cloud PBX system online and downloading an app, is a huge leap forward in effective simplicity.”

South African-made NoPBX uses a technological backbone designed from the ground up for encrypted, dedicated, secure voice communication: the solution runs calls over the existing GSM mobile networks that are highly secure and impervious to the many types of fraud, and call quality issues, that have plagued local VoIP-based PBX users for many years. PBX over mobile also, of course, totally eliminates the issue of cable theft.

The NoPBX smartphone app authenticates itself automatically without user intervention, by using a securely validated GSM cellphone number (MSISDN) to identify the user instead of complicated and hackable usernames and passwords.

“There’s no faster PBX than NoPBX and South Africans should be especially proud of this world-leading example of local mobile innovation developed right in our own back yard. And the call quality is unmatched,” says Potgieter.