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Right now, the Hosted Voice market is undergoing a quiet revolution. For Australian MSPs and small telecom providers, that presents a significant opportunity – if you're ready for it.
Major PBX vendors are making moves away from small businesses. For Aussie MSPs that serve small business, this is both an opportunity and a threat.
In February of this year, 3CX raised pricing on its SMB plans by as much as 43%.
Later, Contact Centre provider Avaya announced a 200 seat minimum for many customers of its flagship Avaya Experience Platform (AXP).
Finally, in March, Mitel announced that it had entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy, immediately reducing confidence in its long-term viability.
The net effect? We’re expecting more Australian SMBs and contact centres to re-enter the market over the next 12–24 months. They will also be searching for better pricing – but also stable, flexible, and feature-rich alternative providers. Can you fill this market gap?
Today’s clients want more than a phone system. They’re looking for platforms that integrate voice, messaging, analytics, and customer interaction into one seamless experience.
The lines between UCaaS and CCaaS are blurring. Whether your client runs a contact centre or a professional services firm, they’re increasingly expecting ‘crossover functionality’: like live analytics, call recording with AI-enhanced transcription, or native CRM integrations.
This is good news for MSPs. With the market changes from Avaya and Mitel, we expect to see small contact centres adopt hybrid solutions that can give them both UC and CCaaS capabilities. All for a single price, with better value, and a single support relationship.
Post-pandemic, cloud PBX solutions are a dime-a-dozen. Small and medium-sized businesses are spoiled for choice when it comes to base-level calling features (Basic Voice).
In today’s market, product differentiation comes from what you can deliver on top of dial tone.
We’re seeing increased demand from Australian businesses for advanced features like:
Call Recording – for seamless call capture and compliance in regulated sectors like NDIS, finance, legal, and healthcare.
AI-enhanced Features – like call recording transcription and sentiment analysis, providing businesses with unique and actionable insights.
Live Analytics & Dashboards – so decision-makers can track KPIs and visualise call handling performance in real time.
Seamless CRM Integrations – to embed voice calling into cornerstone business tools like HubSpot, Zoho, or Salesforce.
If managed communications are a part of your service suite, offering these kinds of advanced PBX features can be the ‘level up’ you need to win higher margin deals, and long-term customers.
According to the Cavell Group, 44% of service providers have seen declining voice revenues and margins in recent years.
The culprit? A race to the bottom on pricing and undifferentiated offerings.
To protect your margin, you need to move beyond reselling voice as a commodity. Instead, frame your solution around business productivity and operational efficiency. Those are the conversations that lead to long-term, high-value partnerships.
Advanced features are the way to start that conversion.
For example, Call Recording lets you talk about the data that comes from phone calls. Is it being captured or lost? Can it be accessed? Cam it be analysed for sentiment and patterns? Then in turn, what parts of a client business might benefit from having a real-time customer insights?
These sorts of conversations move you from being a technology provider, to being a strategic partner. They position you as a trusted technology expert.
Even if you're still leading with aggressive pricing (especially when targeting legacy 3CX or Avaya customers), your ability to offer value on top of Basic Voice – through advanced features - is what ultimately protects your margin and keeps clients loyal.
Some PBX platforms look attractive on paper but fall short in practice.
Our analysis of the Australian wholesale voice market reveals that many platforms hamstring you with expensive add-ons, slow provisioning, and offer little in the way of advanced features.
Building your hosted voice business on the wrong platform can be a liability. Look beyond the ticket price. Watch out for hidden costs like ‘per ticket’ support fees, and be mindful of manual processes that can become a time-suck, such as number porting.
What you need is a future-ready PBX platform: one that is feature-rich, easy to manage, scalable, highly automated, and optimised for the unique needs of the Australian SMB market.
That’s exactly why we built AdvancedPBX. AdvancedPBX is an MSP-friendly platform designed to help you win on both price and value, without compromising on performance or simplicity.
Because in today’s competitive market, it’s not just about voice—it’s about offering differentiated value on top of voice. Only AdvancedPBX gives you the pricing, automation, and advanced features you need to build your business for the long term.
If you’re an MSP or telecom provider looking to:
- Protect your margins
- Win more SMB voice opportunities
- Reduce support overhead
- Move away from legacy platforms
- And deliver next-level value…
