Do you have an office in Brisbane?

No. We are an Australian company working across the country from one location. Building, changing and supporting a phone system happens over the internet. The one job that needs somebody on site is cabling, and that is a local trade whoever supplies your system.

Does daylight saving affect our phone system?

It affects the rules you set on it. Queensland does not change its clocks and New South Wales and Victoria do, so business hours set against the wrong time zone drift by an hour for half the year. Set against Brisbane time, they do not.

Can we start with a system on site and move to hosted later?

Yes, and plenty of businesses do. The handsets usually carry across, which is the expensive part, and the numbers move too. It is worth knowing that at the start, because it means the first decision is not permanent.

What happens to calls if the internet drops?

On a hosted system calls can be set to fall back to mobiles automatically, so the phone still rings. It is worth setting up when the system is built rather than after the first outage.

Do we need a handset on every desk?

No. People who are rarely at a desk can use the system from a laptop or a mobile app instead, and that is often the better answer for a warehouse or for anyone who spends the day on the road.

VoIP phone systems in Brisbane

If you are weighing up a VoIP phone system for a Brisbane business, the first real decision is not which brand. It is whether the system lives in your building or somewhere else, and that decision shapes everything after it.

Hosted, or a box in your comms cupboard

Every business phone system has a brain somewhere. It is the part that decides which phone rings, what the menu says, and where a call goes when nobody picks up. The handsets on the desks are screens and speakers.

That brain either sits in your building or it does not, and that is the decision.

A box on your premises is a purchase you own. It sits in the comms cupboard, an internal call between two desks does not depend on your internet connection, and there is no monthly rental anybody can put up, though supporting it still costs something. It is also hardware in a cupboard, so it can fail, it needs maintaining, and a change is either a site visit or remote access into your network.

A hosted system runs in a data centre. There is no phone system on site to fail, though the handsets and the internet connection still are, changes are made remotely rather than by a site visit, and adding a person is a setting. It is an ongoing cost rather than a purchase, and it leans on your internet connection.

Neither is automatically right, and anybody who tells you otherwise is describing what they sell. The full comparison is on our hosted PBX page.

What a hosted system does that a box cannot

Three things, and between them they are the case for hosting it.

It covers more than one place. A second site, a warehouse and four people at home are all extensions on one system, dialling each other with two or three digits
It changes without anybody coming out. A new starter, a different greeting or a new after hours rule is a setting rather than a visit
It does not age in a cupboard. There is no unit quietly falling out of support while it still appears to be working

What a box still does better is a single site with a lot of desks and somebody technical on staff who would rather own the thing than rent it. That is a real preference and it is not old fashioned.

The handsets a small office actually needs

The handsets are a separate purchase from the system, and they do not have to carry the same brand. That is worth knowing before somebody quotes you a matched set as though it were one product.

For most small offices the split is straightforward.

Most desks need a basic corded phone that makes calls, takes calls and transfers them
Reception needs a bigger screen and programmable keys, because that desk is watching other people’s lines as well as its own
Anyone who moves around the building wants a cordless handset rather than a desk phone they are never sitting at
One conference unit in the room that needs it beats a speakerphone on every desk that does not

The range we work on most is on our Yealink phones page, and the corded against cordless question is on our DECT and cordless page.

Queensland time, and why your phone system needs to know

Queensland does not observe daylight saving and New South Wales and Victoria do. From the first Sunday in October to the first Sunday in April, Brisbane is an hour behind Sydney and Melbourne.

For a Brisbane business with southern customers that can be a phone problem for half the year. Depending on your hours, Sydney customers may start ringing an hour before you open, and any business hours rule set against the wrong clock will let calls through an hour early or cut them off an hour late.

The fix is time conditions, which are rules about what the phones do at what hour.

Business hours set against Brisbane time, so they do not drift when the southern states change their clocks
Early calls answered by a message that says when you open, or sent to whoever is already in
After hours calls routed to a mobile or to voicemail instead of ringing an empty office

It is a setting rather than a purchase, and it is worth getting right when the system is built rather than discovering it in October.

Do you need a phone company in Brisbane?

The honest answer is no, and the useful version of that answer is about when somebody does actually need to be standing in your building.

Building the system, changing the call routing, adding a person and diagnosing a fault are all done over the internet. Handsets are configured before they are posted, so plugging one in is the whole of what happens in your building.

Two jobs need hands on site. One is cabling, if the building needs network points run, and that is an electrician or a cabler rather than a phone supplier. The other is a handset that has physically died, and the answer to that is a replacement in the post, configured before it is sent.

A local supplier subcontracts the cabling the same way. So the thing worth comparing is not the address on the quote, it is who answers when you ring and how long a change takes to happen.

The handsets we fit most often

A desk phone, a cordless handset and a conference unit cover most offices. Prices exclude GST.

What we do, and what we are not

VoIP System is an Australian phone systems company, and an independent one. We install business phone systems, move numbers onto them, build the call routing and look after them afterwards.

We are not one of the manufacturers whose equipment we install, and we are not a partner, reseller or authorised agent of any of them. We work on Yealink, Grandstream, Yeastar and 3CX systems every week, which is a more useful relationship than a badge would be.

If you already have a system and want somebody to look after it rather than replace it, that is a service on its own. It is on our outsourced VoIP support page.

Talk to us about a Brisbane office

Tell us how many desks there are, whether you have more than one location, and what is running your phones now. That is enough for us to say whether hosted or a box on site is the better answer for you.

Call 1300 865 879, or send us the details and we will come back to you.

Common questions

Do you have an office in Brisbane?: No. We are an Australian company working across the country from one location. Building, changing and supporting a phone system happens over the internet. The one job that needs somebody on site is cabling, and that is a local trade whoever supplies your system.
Does daylight saving affect our phone system?: It affects the rules you set on it. Queensland does not change its clocks and New South Wales and Victoria do, so business hours set against the wrong time zone drift by an hour for half the year. Set against Brisbane time, they do not.
Can we start with a system on site and move to hosted later?: Yes, and plenty of businesses do. The handsets usually carry across, which is the expensive part, and the numbers move too. It is worth knowing that at the start, because it means the first decision is not permanent.
What happens to calls if the internet drops?: On a hosted system calls can be set to fall back to mobiles automatically, so the phone still rings. It is worth setting up when the system is built rather than after the first outage.
Do we need a handset on every desk?: No. People who are rarely at a desk can use the system from a laptop or a mobile app instead, and that is often the better answer for a warehouse or for anyone who spends the day on the road.