Choosing a phone system/ PBX/ provider for a SME in Singapore
Another quote we received from DCS Networks Pte Ltd, who quoted us for an IP-PBX system with 4 built-in 4 PSTN lines, 1x WAN port, 4 x LAN Ports, 50 x SIP users license, extensions with voice mail, up to 15 SIP trunk or concurrent calls and well as a very-nice-to-have meet-me conference facility for 8 parties. However, they were also unable to provide us with either Polycom or Cisco phones, trying to sell us Grandstream IP-Phones instead. At approximately SGD 2.5K their offer would also have been within our budget, but again we decided against it because we wanted top-notch phones to provide a superior call experience.
Lantone Systems also provided us with a quote, namely for a Xorcom XR1-19, XR1000 Asterisk Server - 8 FXO, 1U Rack Mount with Yealink phones (or Polycom phones at a considerable mark-up compared to the US, but relatively ok for Singapore). The main reason we decided against Lantone and their offering was the 2K service fees they were planning on charging for the setup of the IP-PBX and phones. Total cost with Yealink phones would have been close to SGD 7K (over 7K with Polycom phones).
In the end, we went with Accede Technology Pte using their SIP Connect Services Global Plan with a 1504 IDD pre-setup for international calls. The advantage of this choice are relatively low setup costs (less than SGD 2K), call quality nearly equal to landline, as the calls are routed through our fibre connection to Accede’s PBX and high-quality Cisco phones with 2 lines and voicemail. There is a running cost of SGD 23 per phone but they also offered us the option to upgrade to a more sophisticated system later on, once our company grows. For our SME the SIP connect is the ideal backup solution, with good call quality and low set-up and moderate on-going costs.
Lastly, for a faxline, we chose Pamfax in connection with Skype, using a UK number, as providers for fax lines with Singaporean numbers were considerably more expensive.
The SME I’m working for has been using Skype for 2 years now, mainly to do marketing calls, but also for client calls. Skype has a very comprehensive offering with online numbers (we’re using a UK landline number which is directly routed into Skype, making it easy for interested parties to call us from the UK, at national rates) and a flatrate for calls to landline numbers 40 countries, in addition to mobile numbers in a few countries. Further, calls to our online numbers are being forwarded for free to either a Singaporean landline or mobile phone of our choice. The downside, however, is that Skype does not always function perfectly and that sometimes the call quality is bad, the call doesn’t go through or similar issues.
When we moved offices, we therefore decided to get an alternate phone solution as back-up system for important calls. To this end, I contacted several local and international providers to source a phone solution that would best suit our needs at relatively low cost.
First, we tried out Pfingo, a local Voip provider exactly like Skype, but of much smaller scale. We had had been told that Pfingo’s call quality was superior to Skype as the company is based out of Singapore. Testing the program, I first noticed how few features Pfingo contains, and that you cannot copy and paste a number into the dialling field, having to type in the number manually instead. This might not sound like a big deal, but if you have a lot of marketing calls to make, typing in the (possibly wrong) numbers can quickly turn into a time sink. The call quality was good overall, but the limited amount of features (no flatrates, no packages for international calls, empty forum/help section) quickly made us decide against Pfingo.
Next, we contacted a number of local providers to get quotes for a PBX system. PBX stands for Private Branch Exchange, a telephone exchange that serves a particular business or office. As an example, if you call Singtel to get 6 landlines for your office, you need a PBX system to transfer calls within your office, to conference people in and so forth. There is quite a range of different PBX systems, as well as so-called virtual PBX systems.
One of the main Telco providers that springs to mind is Cisco, which we contacted, too. However, the salesperson at Logicalis, one of Cisco’s local partners, told us from the get-go that they tend to cater to high-end solutions and that the solution they could provide would not be cheap. That said, the quote Logicalis provided in the end was so over the top and exceeded by multiple times the budget that I had mentioned to them that I wondered why they even bothered coming back with such a quote. Further, there would have been on-going service and licencing costs that additionally reduces the attractiveness of their offering, in my view.
The next company we contacted was BorderlessHub, also a local Singapore company. BorderlessHub offered us a hybrid IP-PBX phone system that supports analog PSTN, digital ISDN, GSM and VoIP trunk lines for small and medium size offices up to 100 users and 22 concurrent calls. Further, the phone system they quoted us featured 4 trunk lines & 4 phone extensions. The trunk lines make it possible to have a virtual ISDN connection using internet broadband, with a flexible configuration for the number of channels (concurrent calls) supporting multiple DIDs with comparatively low setup and subscription charges. This would have enabled us to use a provider such as Pfingo in combination with IP-Phones. BorderlessHub further offered us to test their own brand of IP-Phones, however, we had to pick up/return these phones ourselves and the testing we did was not convincing, as the call quality did not seem to be superior to Skype. Furthermore, there were setup charges of c. SGD 1K, bringing the grand total up-front investment of this solution to close to SGD 3K (including the PBX and 8 IP-Phones). We had asked BorderlessHub for different IP-Phones, either from Cisco or Polycom, but again the prices we quoted were almost twice as high as the cheapest online warehouse in the US (including UPS shipping in 4 days to Singapore for USD 140), citing services charges. BorderlessHub would have been a possibility, but we were not very enthusiastic about going with this solution.
Lantone Systems also provided us with a quote, namely for a Xorcom XR1-19, XR1000 Asterisk Server - 8 FXO, 1U Rack Mount with Yealink phones (or Polycom phones at a considerable mark-up compared to the US, but relatively ok for Singapore). The main reason we decided against Lantone and their offering was the 2K service fees they were planning on charging for the setup of the IP-PBX and phones. Total cost with Yealink phones would have been close to SGD 7K (over 7K with Polycom phones).
In the end, we went with Accede Technology Pte using their SIP Connect Services Global Plan with a 1504 IDD pre-setup for international calls. The advantage of this choice are relatively low setup costs (less than SGD 2K), call quality nearly equal to landline, as the calls are routed through our fibre connection to Accede’s PBX and high-quality Cisco phones with 2 lines and voicemail. There is a running cost of SGD 23 per phone but they also offered us the option to upgrade to a more sophisticated system later on, once our company grows. For our SME the SIP connect is the ideal backup solution, with good call quality and low set-up and moderate on-going costs.
Lastly, for a faxline, we chose Pamfax in connection with Skype, using a UK number, as providers for fax lines with Singaporean numbers were considerably more expensive.
