Your provider, not just your installer.

// Business phone and internet providers, Sydney

One provider for business phone and internet in Sydney.

The usual small-business setup is three suppliers: a telco for the phones, an ISP for the internet and an IT company that installed the router. When a call breaks up, each one blames the other two. Here the connection, the phone service and the network are on one bill from one provider, and the person who answers the phone already knows your network.

• One bill. Business NBN, fibre or fixed wireless, the phone lines and numbers, the managed router and the static IP on one invoice, ex GST, with a fixed quote up front and no surprise lines on it.
• One number to call. 02 9707 0999 reaches the people who run your connection, not a call centre reading from a script. Faults are worked from the router outward, not bounced between companies.
• NBN through carrier partners. The plan is confirmed after we check what is available at your address, and remote setup and support runs Australia-wide.
• On-site across Sydney. Router installs, cabling checks, handset installs and failover testing are done in person across Sydney, Penrith and the Nepean included.
• Phones on the same path. Because the hosted PBX and VoIP handsets come from the same provider as the connection, voice gets priority on the router from day one instead of being bolted on later.

// Business broadband

Which NBN technology is at your address, and what it means for speed.

The NBN is not one network. The technology that reaches your building decides which plan tiers you can get and how close the typical speed comes to the number on the plan. Two businesses a few streets apart can have very different ceilings, which is why the honest answer to "what can we get" is a check on your exact address rather than a general claim.

• Full fibre (FTTP). Fibre all the way into the building. Newer estates and upgraded areas have it. It is the technology the higher plan tiers were built for, and the one where the upload speeds that cloud backup, video calls and VoIP depend on are least likely to disappoint.
• Fibre to the curb (FTTC). Fibre to a pit in the street, then a short run of the existing copper into the building. Short copper is kind to speed. The higher tiers depend on that last stretch.
• Cable (HFC). The old pay-TV coaxial network, reused for broadband. Which tiers are on offer depends on the connection, and the address check tells us.
• Fibre to the node (FTTN). Fibre to a cabinet in the street, then copper the rest of the way. Copper degrades with distance and with wet weather, so a 100 plan on a long copper run may not deliver 100. The address check tells you the realistic ceiling before you pay for a tier you cannot use.
• Fixed wireless. A radio link from a local tower to an antenna on your roof, for the pockets the fixed network does not reach. Plans from $80 a month for 50/20 and $109 for 100/40.

Speeds in the table below are typical plan speeds, not guaranteed. They depend on your premises, the cabling inside it and congestion. Where the copper tail is the limit, I will say so rather than sell you a faster plan that cannot arrive.

// Backup internet

Failover: a second connection that takes over.

A small business does not lose money because the internet is 40 percent slower. It loses money because the internet is down, the EFTPOS terminal is offline and the phones are dead. Failover is a spare tyre: a second connection, typically a 4G or 5G service, that does nothing while the NBN is healthy and carries everything the moment it dies. When the NBN recovers, the traffic moves home again. Every connection here can be quoted with a failover option.

• When it is worth it. If an hour offline costs you trade, bookings or a payroll run, a second link that does nothing 364 days a year pays for itself on day 365. If the complaint is "the internet crawls for everyone in the afternoon", that is a capacity problem and a faster plan fixes it, not failover.
• How the router switches. Pinging the NBN box on the wall is the wrong test, because the box answers while the carrier behind it is dead. A proper setup checks real internet targets through each link, needs several consecutive misses before it declares the link down, and fails back cautiously so a flapping link does not drag every session back and forth.
• The mobile catch. Mobile carriers rarely hand out a public IP, so while you are on the backup, inbound services such as a VPN into the office or remote camera access stop working. Outbound keeps flowing and staff barely notice. If inbound matters, we plan around it or use a fixed-IP mobile service.
• Test it by pulling the plug. A failover that has never been tested is a hope, not a plan. Test it by disconnecting the primary and watching the phones and the terminal stay up.

The long version, including when load balancing beats failover and the MikroTik versus pfSense question, is in the dual WAN failover guide. The switching runs on a business-grade router rather than the ISP box, on the build described in what a proper small-business router and firewall build looks like.

// The NBN switchover

Your phone now comes over the internet.

The bit nobody explains at switchover time: once you're on the NBN, your phone line is not a phone line any more. The call travels over your internet connection, and you have three ways to keep a handset on the desk. Plug the old handset into an adaptor, buy a proper VoIP handset, or skip the desk phone entirely and answer the number through an app on your mobile. All three work. Which one suits you mostly depends on how attached you are to the old handset.

Two traps worth knowing about. Only some providers actually use the phone ports on the NBN connection box, so whether your old handset can plug straight in depends on who your service is with, not on the box itself. And if calls have to survive a blackout, the battery backup has to be on the right boxes: the NBN equipment and the router both need it, or the phones die with the lights. In an office running wired handsets off a network switch, the same rule extends to the PoE budget, so the switch powering the phones stays up too. None of this is hard. It just has to be thought about before the outage, not during it.

Line rental vs SIP: what replaces the old line.

On copper you paid line rental: a monthly fee for the physical pair into the building, then calls on top. Copper phone lines are being retired, so that line and its rental go with it. What replaces it is a SIP channel, a call path over your internet connection. One channel carries one call at a time, so you buy the number of simultaneous calls you need rather than the number of physical lines you once had. On the VoIP and phones page a half channel for light use is $21.95 a month, four channels are $44 and ten are $77. Your phone numbers sit separately as direct-in-dial numbers at $6.60 each, or $33 for a 10-pack, and they are ported across so callers dial what they always dialled. For a one-phone shop the cheapest honest replacement is a half channel and one number. For an office it is a channel pack sized to the busiest hour.

// Indicative pricing

What it roughly costs.

Real numbers, because "contact us for pricing" is code for "brace yourself." These are honest ballparks, your fixed quote comes after a free consult.

Indicative pricing ex GST via our carrier partners. Speeds are typical plan speeds, not guaranteed, they depend on your premises, cabling and congestion. Setup and porting quoted up front.

// Questions

Internet and phone, your questions answered.

// Pairs well with