Telephony is the broad term for transmitting voice over a network. It covers everything from the original copper-wire phone system to modern internet-based calling.
Today most business telephony is cloud telephony: the call setup, routing, and features run in software on remote servers instead of on hardware in a closet. That shift made advanced call handling affordable for small businesses.
Frontdesk gives you a business number answered by an AI receptionist that picks up every call, qualifies the caller, books the appointment, and logs the whole conversation to your CRM.