Phones & internet guides
Fibre, VoIP, Teams calling and the copper switch-off. 25 plain-English guides for small and medium businesses.
- The copper switch-off: what your business needs to move, and whenCopper phone and broadband lines are being retired area by area across New Zealand, and anything still plugged into one will stop working when your address is switched off. The job is to find every device that relies on copper, move it to fibre, wireless or mobile, and test it before the line goes dead.
- VoIP explained: what it is and what it means for a small businessVoIP (voice over internet protocol) means your phone calls travel over an internet connection instead of a dedicated copper phone line. For a small business it usually means cheaper calls, numbers that follow staff anywhere, and features that used to need an expensive phone system, as long as your internet is reliable.
- Hosted PBX, Teams calling or mobiles only: which phone setup suits youA hosted PBX suits offices with a receptionist, call queues and desk phones; Teams calling suits teams that already work inside Microsoft 365; and mobile-only suits very small or mobile businesses that rarely transfer calls. Many offices end up with a mix, but the main system should match how calls are really answered.
- What a business phone system costs, and what changes the priceMost NZ small businesses on a cloud phone system pay a monthly fee per user, plus small charges for extra numbers and add-ons, plus one-off costs for handsets and setup. Typical totals vary widely with features and hardware, so compare quotes line by line rather than on headline per-user price.
- How to move your business phone numbers to a new providerPorting moves your existing phone numbers from one provider to another, so customers keep dialling the same number. It is routine, but it needs the right account details, a scheduled cut-over time and a working new system ready before the switch, or calls can drop for hours.
- 0800 numbers and local numbers: which your business actually needsAn 0800 number makes calls free for the caller and suits businesses selling nationally, while a local number signals a real presence in a town and costs you nothing per inbound call. With a cloud phone system you can run both, plus numbers for other cities, all ringing the same team.
- Call queues, auto attendants and IVR: designing a call flow that worksAn auto attendant greets callers and offers choices, a call queue holds callers until someone is free, and IVR is the menu system that ties them together. Used well, they get callers to the right person quickly; used badly, they create long menus that make people hang up.
- Recording business phone calls: the practical and legal basicsNew Zealand businesses do record calls for training, quality and dispute resolution, but recordings are personal information under the Privacy Act 2020, so you need a clear purpose, to tell callers, and to store and delete recordings carefully. This guide covers the general principles; for your specific situation, get legal advice.
- Desk phones, softphones or mobile apps: what staff should answer calls onDesk phones are the most reliable and simplest for people who live on the phone, softphones on laptops suit hybrid staff with good headsets, and mobile apps suit people who are rarely at a desk. Most offices mix them by role rather than choosing one for everyone.
- Fixing choppy, echoing or dropping VoIP callsMost VoIP quality problems come from four places: an overloaded or unstable internet connection, a poorly configured office network, weak Wi-Fi, or bad headsets and handsets. Work through them in order, starting with when and where the problem happens, and you can usually find the cause without guessing.
- What internet connection a cloud phone system really needsA single VoIP call uses very little bandwidth, so almost any business fibre plan has enough capacity for an office's calls. What matters is that the connection is stable, that upload capacity is not swallowed by other traffic, and that your router can give calls priority.
- Choosing business fibre: UFB, Hyperfibre, static IPs and service levelsFor most small offices, a standard business UFB fibre plan with good upload speed, a static IP if you need one, and clear fault response times is the right choice. Hyperfibre and dedicated fibre are for offices with heavy data needs or a low tolerance for downtime, and the extra cost should be justified by what an outage costs you.
- Moving office: plan the fibre install before you sign the leaseFibre at a new office can take anything from a couple of weeks to several months, depending on whether the building is already connected, whether consents are needed and how busy installers are. Check fibre status before you sign the lease, order as soon as the lease is confirmed, and have a temporary connection ready in case it is late.
- Backup internet for business: choosing between 4G, 5G, second fibre and StarlinkA backup internet connection keeps your office working when the main fibre fails, and the best backup is one that uses a different path to the outside world. For most small offices a 4G or 5G wireless connection with automatic failover is the practical choice; a second fibre or Starlink suits sites with weak mobile coverage or a low tolerance for downtime.
- Starlink for rural businesses: what to expect and how to set it up wellFor rural businesses without fibre, Starlink usually delivers much faster and more usable internet than old copper or patchy wireless, good enough for cloud apps, video calls and VoIP phones. It works best with a clear view of the sky, a sound installation, a decent router and a backup plan for the occasional dropout.
- Fixed wireless broadband for business: when it works and when it does notFixed wireless delivers internet over a mobile or dedicated wireless network to an antenna or modem at your premises. It can be a solid option where fibre is not available or as a backup, but performance depends heavily on signal strength and how busy the local tower is, so test it at your site before committing.
- Business mobile plans and managing staff phones properlyFor most small businesses, a pooled business mobile plan with company-owned numbers, combined with basic device management on every phone that holds work email, gives the best mix of cost control and security. The details that matter most are who owns the numbers and what happens to work data when a phone is lost or someone leaves.
- Sending and receiving texts from your business numberMany cloud phone systems and SMS services let staff send and receive texts from the business number instead of their personal mobiles, which keeps conversations with customers in one place. Used for reminders, confirmations and replies it works well; marketing texts come with legal rules about consent and opt-outs.
- How to stop missing calls from customersMost missed calls in a small business happen because calls ring one person who is busy, away or after hours. A cloud phone system fixes this with ring groups, overflow rules, voicemail to email and missed-call alerts, so every call either reaches someone or leaves a message the right person sees quickly.
- Business phones for remote and hybrid staffWith a cloud phone system or Teams calling, a staff member working from home answers the same extension, in the same queues, with the same caller ID as in the office. The setup is simple; what makes it work well is a good headset, a reasonable home connection and clear rules about availability.
- Emergency 111 calls on a VoIP phone systemCloud phone systems can call 111, but unlike an old copper line they depend on power and internet at your premises, and the location sent to emergency services is usually the address registered with your provider. Keep that address accurate, have mobiles available as a backup and make sure staff know which phone to use.
- Consolidating your business telco bills without losing anything importantMost small businesses pay for services they no longer use: old copper lines, forgotten numbers, unused mobile connections and overlapping plans. An audit of every telco bill, followed by careful consolidation onto fewer providers or a single account, usually reduces cost and makes problems easier to sort out.
- Moving alarms, EFTPOS, lift phones and other devices off copperWhen copper lines are retired, the devices most likely to fail silently are monitored alarms, older EFTPOS terminals, lift emergency phones, intercoms and fax machines. Each needs its own supplier to fit a replacement connection, usually cellular or IP, and each must be tested end to end before the copper is cut.
- Keeping phones and internet running during a power cutFibre, routers and VoIP phones all stop when the power goes, so a short outage can silence your business line. A small UPS on the fibre terminal, firewall and network switch keeps internet and desk phones running for a useful period, and automatic call diversion to mobiles covers anything longer.
- Does your business need a static IP address?A static IP address is a fixed internet address for your office connection. You need one if outside systems connect into your office or if a service only trusts traffic from your address; many cloud-based businesses do not need one at all.