Business VoIP phone systems for SMEs in Switzerland

In Switzerland, analog and ISDN lines have given way to IP telephony. For a business phone system, the question is therefore no longer whether to move to VoIP, but how: keep a phone system at the office, or switch to a virtual PBX hosted by a provider.

For an SME, VoIP brings flexibility: calls follow employees at the office, when working from home or on the road. It does, however, require a reliable connection and a few precautions.

What is a virtual PBX?

The PBX manages numbers, internal extensions, call queues, opening hours and voicemail. With a virtual PBX, all of this is hosted by the provider and configured online: no more box to maintain at the office, and a new employee can be set up without anyone coming on site.

The cost shifts from a hardware investment to a subscription, usually per user or per number. Compare offers on equal features: call queues, call recording, statistics, address book integration.

Teams Phone or a dedicated app?

If your teams already work in Microsoft Teams, telephony can be built into it: external calls arrive in Teams, on the computer as well as on the smartphone. This requires a Teams Phone license, included or available as an add-on depending on the Microsoft 365 subscription, and an operator that connects Teams to the phone network.

The provider's app is a better fit if some employees do not use Teams, if call reception needs advanced features, or if many desk phones remain in use. Either way, your numbers stay the same.

Can you keep your numbers? Number porting

In Switzerland, you can keep your numbers when changing operator: this is called number porting. It needs preparation.

• List every number, including fax and rarely used numbers.
• Do not cancel the old contract before porting is complete: a canceled number can be lost.
• Identify equipment that still uses a line: alarms, elevators, payment terminals, door intercoms.
• Schedule the switchover on a quiet day, with the new system already configured and tested.

Business VoIP: connection quality and fallback

A call uses little bandwidth, but it is sensitive to delay and packet loss: a connection saturated by a file upload is enough to make the voice choppy.

Before going live, testing the connection at peak hours shows whether voice gets through properly, including during video calls and backups.

• A stable business connection, with voice traffic prioritized on the firewall.
• Solid Wi-Fi if calls go through laptops or smartphones.
• Automatic forwarding to mobiles if the office Internet goes down.
• A backup link (4G or 5G) if the phone is critical to the business.

Emergency numbers

With a virtual PBX, an emergency call (112, 117, 118, 144) is normally routed according to the address registered with the provider. Check that each site has the correct address, and remind employees working from home that a call made from the app may be located at the office. From home, a mobile phone remains the safest option.

How SysPros helps

SysPros offers VoIP telephony through a partner, and can take care of, depending on your contract, everything that touches your IT: connection, firewall, Wi-Fi and workstations.