Disaster recovery : re routing your telephone system yourself

Let call re routing be under your control

Given the development of virtual telephony systems and the advance of "Non geographic numbers" it has become easier for companies to take direct control over their own call routing.

So what are non geographic numbers?

0870, 0845, 0871, 0800, 0808 & 07XX numbers are termed "Non Geographic" (NGN) because they are not fixed to one particular location and their dialling prefixes do not represent a particular geographical area.

For example, a business number prefixed with 0207 indicates that company premises are in the London area but one that starts with 0870 could be in London, Scotland or any where in the UK.

Many different 0XXX number ranges exist including 0870, 0871, 0845, 0808, 0800, 0802, 0844 (non exhaustive). See our 0870 buyers guide for more information

How can I use them in a disaster recovery situation?

Some providers of NGN numbers enable you to change the actual land line number they route to via the web. This means in a disaster situation calls can be re routed to an alternative location literally in seconds.

In the next blog we'll explore other ways 0845, 0870 and other NGN numbers can be used to enhance business continuity planning in the event of a disaster.

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Disaster recovery : re routing your telephone system

Have your phone provider re-route incoming calls to another number you specify

This method is possible and would work in a disaster recovery situation. However you still need to think of the following points:-

• What will a phone providers response time be?
  
• Who will they re route calls to?
  

Considering the first point unless you have a special agreement or Service Level Agreement (SLA)you could be waiting longer than you would really like to. Other factors affect the effectiveness of this method such as the number of incoming calls and how many different numbers your calls come in on.

If you have standby offices then the issue of who to re route calls to is simple. If you do not you'll have to choose pre selected numbers as already specified in your Business Continuity Plan (BCP).

The issue of who to route calls to does arise in other methods of handling incoming calls in a disaster scenario but are compounded in this method if you have to rely on someone else to do it.


The more control you have over your telephone system the more tightly you can control how calls are routed and be sure of the response times.

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