ASX-listed IT and telecommunications provider Over the Wire (ASX:OTW) is upgrading core elements of its network and private cloud infrastructure housed in NEXTDC’s (ASX:NXT) national Tier IV data centre network.

The strategic partnership means Over the Wire now owns and manages an expansive carrier grade network and has more than two dozen ‘points of presence’ Australia-wide, including in six NEXTDC data centres.

Already home to key elements of Over the Wire’s recently completed Tier 1 voice network, NEXTDC’s data centres form the highly reliable and fault tolerant backbone for Over the Wire’s new SuperCore equipment. The SuperCore further amplifies Over the Wire’s already expansive network capacity by delivering multiple ultra-high bandwidth connections, and provides a high-speed backbone to connect businesses and cloud services across the country.

Over the Wire Managing Director Michael Omeros said the strategic partnership meant they could deliver cutting-edge, affordable, and fully integrated telecommunications and IT systems for Australian businesses.

“Combining our digital network with NEXTDC’s digital infrastructure platform opens up new opportunities and capabilities for both of us,” Mr Omeros said.

“Housing our SuperCore equipment in NEXTDC’s market leading data centres enables us to deliver superior connectivity, collaboration, and cloud services to businesses.”

“Australian businesses are rapidly turning to cloud technology as digital transformation serves as the primary driver behind organisational productivity improvements and customer experiences.

“Together, NEXTDC and Over the Wire are at the forefront of helping Australian businesses embrace the cloud and digital transformation.”

Michael Omeros – Managing Director at Over the Wire

“Our partnership means our network rivals the world’s leading cloud providers and cloud on-ramp services. It supercharges our multi-cloud capability, and strengthens our existing private cloud offering.”

“NEXTDC has data centres in Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, Canberra and Sydney, which gives us access to nationwide consistency across the facilities.

“Quality, security, and reliability are crucial when it comes to operating in the digital sphere and NEXTDC’s hosting infrastructure is second-to-none.

“Access to their data centres provides us with many new opportunities including fibre to other facilities and also to other carriers that have equipment there as well.”

NEXTDC Chief Customer and Commercial Officer, David Dzienciol said “The deep networking capabilities of Over the Wire, teamed with NEXTDC’s national digital infrastructure platform offers Enterprise and Government greater choice, when it comes to best of breed infrastructure and capabilities to support their business.”

“We are very proud of the strong and trusted partnerships we have built within our partner ecosystem. Strategic partnerships like the one we have forged with Over the Wire play a crucial role in providing the much needed access to the cloud platforms and digital services that businesses need to succeed, all of which are accessible from within any of our data centres nationally,” David said.

“We are very fortunate having the opportunity to partner with likeminded organisations like Over the Wire. We share a passion for technology, and a view of always putting customers first.”

David Dzienciol – Chief Customer and Commercial Officer at NEXTDC

“As individual organisations and as a partnership, we are dedicated to playing an important role for our customers and helping to drive the underlying growth of the digital economy here in Australia”.

The post Tech Leaders Team Up To Lead Digital Transformation Australia-Wide appeared first on Over the Wire.

Completion of the platform means Over the Wire joins an exclusive group of Tier 1 carriers in Australia that can now offer full-service voice capabilities. Other Tier 1 carriers include Telstra, Optus, TPG, MyNetFone, and Vocus.

The Carrier Interconnect project involved building connectivity between our voice platform and other Tier 1 carriers. With infrastructure networked across multiple data centres spanning the country, the result is a high-quality telephony product that works seamlessly with our suite of data, voice, cloud and security solutions.

As the final process in the creation of the enhanced voice platform, our team are currently undertaking the migration of numbers off carrier partners and onto our own network. A number of more complex transfers will occur throughout the balance of the 2021 calendar year.

The completion of the project will provide Over the Wire with:

• Increased control over number porting, call quality and fault resolution across our voice network and the resulting improvement in customer service.
• A more diverse and scalable product suite to offer existing clients and the clients of recently acquired businesses including Zintel, Fonebox and Digital Sense.
• The ability to target larger contracts including large, national and multinational companies; all levels of government and non-government organisations; and wholesale international carriers.
• Access to the high growth UCaaS, CPaaS and CCaaS wholesale markets.

Over the Wire has spent more than three years building the interconnected voice network with major infrastructure hosted across multiple NEXTDC data centres around the country as part of a larger partnership between the groups.

Managing Director Michael Omeros said completion of the carrier interconnect project was a significant milestone in the history of the company and had laid the foundation for a new phase of growth.

“We will be far less reliant on third-party providers and unencumbered by legacy technology,” he said. “The platform also opens up a host of new organic growth options and opportunities that would previously be out of our reach that we will now be able to pursue, win and deliver.”

Mr Omeros said the voice platform was a critical component of Over the Wire’s positioning as an integrated platform provider committed to improving customers’ experience by simplifying technology to empower business.

“Voice solutions are a critical component of our integrated offering and as a Tier 1 provider we will be able to meet the needs of a much wider market,” he said.

Completion of the network means that an outbound call from the company’s voice platform will go directly to the carrier who owns the number dialled. In the case of an incoming call, the originating carrier will send the call directly to Over the Wire’s voice network, with no other carrier in-between.

The post Over the Wire joins exclusive group of Tier 1 Voice Carriers appeared first on Over the Wire.

We would like to thank you for your support throughout this challenging year. We look forward to continuing to partner with your business in 2021.

Over the Wire’s Embargo Period: 14 December 2020 to 10 January 2021

Due to our upstream carrier embargoes, some orders and number ports will be delayed during the Embargo Period and may also be held up afterwards as the backlog is processed by our suppliers. Over the Wire’s Service Delivery and Support Teams will operate with a reduced staff during the Embargo Period to process any active and emergency deployments and resolve any service issues. We’ll notify you of any potential impacts to your orders and delivery time frames in the lead up to the Embargo Period. If you would like any more information regarding Over the Wire’s Embargo Period, please contact us at sales@overthewire.com.au.

PBX Service Changes

We encourage our customers to submit any PBX holiday-specific changes such as IVR messages before 5pm on the 16th of December to ensure they are applied and tested prior to Christmas. Please email support@overthewire.com.au with your requirements as soon as possible. If you would like to change the IVR messages on your PBX, please ensure you attach the appropriate files and include clear instructions of how you want the new routing to operate, along with start and end dates for these changes.

Office Shut-Down: 25 December 2020 – 3 January 2021

The bulk of our staff will be taking a well-earned break from 25 December to 3 January. Over the Wire’s Network Operations Centre will continue to operate throughout the holiday period and is available 24×7. Our Provisioning team will have reduced staffing to manage any emergency deployment issues, and our Sales and Billing teams will not be operating. Our focus during this period will be the up time of your services. Specific changes should be requested in advance to ensure resources are available. Any unscheduled change requests may result in extended delays or additional costs.

Normal operations will resume from Monday 4 January 2021.

Best wishes for a safe and happy Christmas.

The post Over the Wire Embargo Period 2020 appeared first on Over the Wire.

The Zintel brand has returned to the voice market in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) following Over the Wire Holdings Limited’s (ASX:OTW) acquisition of the ANZ voice businesses of J2 Global Inc. The acquisition brings together Over the Wire’s existing outbound capabilities with Zintel’s (previously, ‘eVoice’) services including call routing intelligence, data intelligence, call management and analytics. It also marks a new and exciting expansion for Over the Wire into New Zealand and complements the growth objectives of the business.

Zintel will leverage its 25-year history in ANZ telecommunications to help businesses in the COVID-19 era modernise their voice-based communications and empower their workers to be more responsive and connected, no matter where they’re working from.

This need is now even more pronounced when so many workers are no longer at their office desks; instead, they’re working from home or a remote location using a laptop and a mobile phone. If customer calls go unanswered, businesses may struggle to thrive in a challenging economy. Therefore, companies, whether large enterprises or small businesses, need a solution that ensures no inbound call goes unanswered, regardless of where the workforce is located. Furthermore, organisations need to gain actionable insights based on accurate data which the Zintel platform delivers.

As part of the OTW family, Zintel will now be able to offer much more to customers through combined whole-of-business voice services including outbound capabilities. These capabilities will help businesses communicate effectively with customers, identify opportunities for improvement and intelligently manage calls for improved outcomes.

Michael Mulvey, head of SMB pillar, Over the Wire, said, “This acquisition has happened in an uncertain and increasingly decentralised working world, when it has never been more important for people to connect. Zintel empowers intelligent conversations, which make physical location irrelevant and continue to power business growth in a precarious business landscape.”

Michael Omeros, group CEO and managing director, Over the Wire, said, “The fusion of inbound services with Over the Wire’s outbound services is one of the most promising aspects of the acquisition. Customers will soon be able to access the full suite of products, including inbound and outbound, all delivered with Zintel’s renowned customer service. Zintel will continue to innovate and provide more value to its customers, as the next chapter of the business unfolds.”

Zintel’s intelligent capabilities will enable and accelerate business growth for its customers today, and into the future, by prioritising powerful performance, seamless data-driven connections and advanced customer experience.

The post Zintel returns to the voice market in big win for ANZ businesses appeared first on Over the Wire.

The acquisition was funded through Over the Wire’s cash reserves and a debt facility with Westpac.

The Acquired Business is expected to contribute approximately $19M revenue and $6M EBITDA to Over the Wire on an annualised basis.

Strategic Rationale

• Acquisition of a leading platform provider of inbound telecommunication services in Australia and New Zealand, delivering proven solutions to the corporate and small / medium enterprise (SME) market.
• Introduces new solution capability to Over the Wire in the areas of inbound telephony services including call routing intelligence, data intelligence, call management and analytics reporting, via a proprietary technology platform.
• Customer base offers cross-sell opportunities, particularly in outbound voice and Hosted Telephony services.
• Highly capable team led by experienced management that will be able to deliver a whole of business voice offering to the Australian and New Zealand SME market with complementary capabilities, when combined with Over the Wire subsidiary Faktortel.
• Delivers platform capability to Over the Wire that further complements our growth objectives within the Cloud Voice, Mobility and Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) market.
• EBITDA and EPS accretive transaction.

The post Over the Wire Acquisition of Australian and New Zealand Voice Businesses of J2 Global Inc Completed appeared first on Over the Wire.

Over the Wire has taken the complexity out of managing a fleet of mobiles by simplifying the process and offering a range of great BYOD (bring your own device) plan options. Worrying about data use, call time, or the number of text messages sent is a thing of the past. Other great features include:

• Easy management
• Data pooling
• Rapid deployment
• Flexible design

Having been an Optus MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) since 2016 the company has focused on mobile broadband offerings. In 2017 Over the Wire was the winner of the ‘Innovating for Excellence’ award from Optus for their work in developing a Layer 2, private mobile data offering. The added privacy and security that this offers has since been highly sought after by businesses across Australia. 

Michael Omeros, Group CEO of Over the Wire, explained that the company’s purpose – simplify technology to empower business, is at the core of all decisions; “We want to take away the complexity of having a corporate mobile fleet by offering 3 comprehensive plans, and focusing on making it as easy and convenient to manage as possible.”

Read more about OTW’s Mobile Fleet offering or speak with our team to take control of your mobile fleet today.

The post Over the Wire takes the complexity out of managing your mobile fleet appeared first on Over the Wire.

Microsoft Teams already dominates the collaboration and corporate messaging market, and now you can make and receive internal and external voice and video calls by adding Calling. With Over the Wire’s MS Teams Calling solution you can use Direct Routing and replace your legacy PBX phone system.

Over the Wire takes the complexity out of Direct Routing by managing the Session Border Controllers (SBCs) and connecting you to our NetSIP voice platform. We don’t take a ‘one size fits all’ approach either – we work with you to tailor a solution specific to your business requirements, while still being able to be deployed in hours across your organisation. Other great features include:

• Simple deployment into MS Teams Phone System
• High quality calls backed by robust infrastructure deployments
• No migration of Microsoft Office 365 licensing required
• Flexible plan options to suit your business
• Leverage the deep integration with the Office 365 product suite

There’s never been a better time to embrace the deep integration that MS Teams offers with Office 365. Work from anywhere while staying connected to your business, colleagues and customers – as well as taking advantage of the community of millions of MS Teams users worldwide.

Read more about Microsoft Teams Calling or speak with our team about getting your business connected today.

The post Microsoft Teams just got a whole lot better! appeared first on Over the Wire.

Today, 30th September 2019, marks the end for traditional telephony in Australia. After a few false-starts and delays, today Telstra is officially starting to decommission ISDN services.

Shutdown of the ISDN (integrated services digital network) means the full disconnection of these services. This doesn’t only impact the phone lines, it also includes any phone numbers that haven’t yet been transitioned to Business VoIP. That means that any businesses caught out will face a situation where they not only are disconnected from making outbound calls until they find a replacement solution, but will also lose their phone numbers and their inbound calls – an unparalleled risk to Australian businesses that could cause significant impacts to revenue and customer relations for those caught out.

What is ISDN?

The ISDN has been the fixed line telephony option for businesses for decades, offering offices multiple simultaneous calls over a single connection. With the rise of SIP and Business VoIP services, organisations have instead been able to gain access to their phone services over the top (OTT) of existing internet and network connections – gaining flexibility and redundancy, while also being able to lower costs.

As a pioneer of converged voice and data solutions in Australia, Over the Wire has been at the forefront of this trend for well over a decade, having seen the writing on the wall for ISDN for quite some time. With the rise of OTT voice services, sales of traditional on-premises phone systems have plummeted in favour of cloud hosted PBX phone systems. These offer centralisation of the system for all branches for seamless collaboration, high-availability for ultimate usability from anywhere, and ease of access to reports and dashboards to help provide additional insights previously out of reach for most businesses. 

The enormous benefits to functionality and pricing made the mass exodus from ISDN (even before the shutdown was announced) no surprise to those in the industry. Even still, many companies still haven’t made the change, which is putting their business at risk.

Protecting your business

Preparation is key to surviving the ISDN shutdown, with a guide available to help businesses navigate the challenge. First and foremost, it is important to understand your risk exposure. The ISDN Shutdown Survival Guide will help you start planning, with Over the Wire available to help design and implement the best transition for you to keep your business connected. Speak to our expert team today and make sure your business is prepared.

The post The king is dead, long live the king appeared first on Over the Wire.

With the shutdown of ISDN services to commence at the end of September 2019, the death of traditional telephony is just around the corner. The roll-out of NBN, while incomplete, has been the catalyst for Telstra to pull support for the legacy fixed-line technology, and the flood of change requests has well and truly commenced.

Number Porting

A major change for organisations shifting from ISDN phone services to business VoIP is the requirement to convert their existing phone numbers to be virtually hosted. This is achieved by porting these numbers to a new VoIP provider to ensure they aren’t lost when ISDN services are disconnected.

Delays in porting numbers are already noticeable and substantial, with average porting timeframes doubled in the past 6 months when transferring away from Telstra, and increased over 50% from Optus and other carriers. These delays are impacting all number porting, not just transitions from ISDN, and is only expected to get worse as fixed-line telephony shutdown becomes a reality.

Handling the delays:

• Planning ahead is paramount. With complex number porting often taking as long as three months to finalise, getting ports underway early is the best way to ensure you don’t miss any calls. Over the Wire customers get access to our powerful self-service Customer Portal and easy-to-use number porting tool, and of course our friendly staff are always happy to help simplify the process for you.
• While waiting for number ports to be completed, a redirection to temporary numbers can help to keep services flowing and give you the ability to take advantage of your new VoIP setup sooner. Ask our sales team if you qualify for free temporary numbers to help make your transition to Over the Wire even smoother than ever.

Fibre Service Provisioning

In addition to the delays in number porting, the extra demand for high speed fibre internet and private network services has also caused longer than usual provisioning timeframes for these services. Whether as a necessity due to copper-based connections no longer being serviceable, or businesses taking advantage of great new pricing for additional bandwidth options to support over-the-top voice services, the spike in requests has been noticeable. While typical lead times for fibre services is between 4 – 8 weeks, the current trend is generally between 8 – 14 weeks.

Handling the delays:

• Again, planning ahead is an important factor. If moving office or in the path of a disconnection be sure to have your request in early to stay connected.
• If you’re in a pinch for time, we’ve got your back. Our Private Mobile Data options are a great way to bridge the gap and have you up-and-running fast – just see what Credo Financial had to say when we helped them relocate with just 2 weeks notice!

Be ready for the ISDN shutdown

If you’d like to know more about the ISDN shutdown and how you can make sure your business is prepared, check out or ISDN Shutdown Survival Guide, an ebook designed specifically to help Australian businesses navigate the minefield being caused the Telstra’s ISDN shutdown. Or let us know if you’d like help from one of our sales consultants to guide you through the process.

The post Threat of ISDN shutdown already causing delays across the industry appeared first on Over the Wire.

Since the ramp-up of the NBN roll-out, disconnection has been looming over ISDN services – the main phone lines still used by the majority of Australian businesses. With the cease of sale having come into full effect in June 2018, it might come as a surprise to many businesses that they only have a short time left before the disconnection of services commences. Originally slated to commence in June 2019, Telstra have quietly extended this to 30 September 2019, but this only buys businesses an extra 3 months to transition off the technology.

What services are being killed off, and why?

ISDN is a digital network technology that carries voice and data services over the public switched telephone network. This method requires a physical connection per location, dedicated to telephony traffic. With the rise of Voice over IP solutions telephony traffic can move to more versatile data network connections, enabling versatility and redundancy not available through traditional telephony.

Spurred on by the continued roll-out of the NBN, Telstra ceased sale of ISDN2, ISDN2 Enhanced, ISDN10/20/30, DDS Fastway, Megalink and Frame Relay products from 30th June 2018, with a final disconnection date expected by 2022 which is when the products will no longer exist. The disconnection of ISDN timeline is as follows:

• 31st January 2018 – New ISDN services became unavailable for customers who did not already have ISDN in place.
• 30th June 2018 – Full cease sale on new or additional ISDN services came into effect for all customers. No new ISDN services are available.
• 30th September 2019 – Disconnection will commence for existing ISDN connections
• By 2022 – All ISDN connections will be disconnected and the full network will be decommissioned.

How to survive the ISDN Shutdown

Preparation is key to surviving the ISDN shutdown without having your phones cut off. We’ve compiled an ISDN Shutdown Survival Guide to help businesses stay ahead.

This guide includes how to find out if your phone line is ISDN, an overview of the ISDN shutdown, what’s after ISDN, and how to deploy an IP telephony solution for your business.

To find out more, download the Survival Guide or reach out to a member of the Over the Wire team today.

The post The Death of Traditional Telephony Is Just Around The Corner appeared first on Over the Wire.