/ The problem
The group was paying ~$180/month per site for Telstra ISDN line rental — over $6,400/year for three sites — to keep one inbound number per café. Calls dropped during peak Saturday brunch service, the lines had no auto-receptionist, and Telstra had quoted a multi-thousand-dollar 'line decommissioning' fee that nobody could decode. Time pressure: lease renewals on the legacy lines were 30 days away.
/ What we did
- 01Audited internet quality at each site — confirmed all three had enough upstream bandwidth for SIP voice once QoS was configured.
- 02Spec'd and quoted 3CX hosted PBX with a single auto-receptionist routing to whichever site picked up first, plus a shared bookings queue for high-traffic Saturdays.
- 03Ran new Cat6 drops from the comms cupboards to the new VoIP handset positions at each counter (the existing wiring was a mess of extension cables).
- 04Ported all three inbound landline numbers to the new SIP carrier two weeks before cutover so callers experienced no number change.
- 05Friday 8pm cutover at all three sites in parallel (two technicians on the road). Tested 14 different inbound/outbound/transfer scenarios per site before signing off.
- 06Configured QoS on the new Ubiquiti UniFi Cloud Gateway at each site so VoIP traffic is prioritised over staff Wi-Fi and POS traffic.
/ The outcome
Monthly line cost (3 sites)
$540/mo→$96/mo
Annual saving
—→$5,328
Saturday call drops
5–8/wk→0
Missed breakfast bookings during cutover
—→0
"We were terrified the phones would die on a Saturday. Instead they just… worked, and the bill halved. Wish we'd done it three years ago."