Optical Solutions Australia - local preview

Five branches, five phone systems, now one.

Optical Solutions Australia is the country's leading designer and distributor of optical network solutions, and a Hexatronic Group company. It builds the networks Australia runs on. Its own phone systems, however, were five separate legacy PBXs that could not talk to each other. Today the whole company works from one Uniden Voice Over Cloud platform, where every branch can call, chat, transfer and overflow as a single national team.

MT
Mike Thomas, Chief Executive Officer, Optical Solutions Australia
Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Perth
An OSA and Hexatronic field crew testing a blown fibre installation in the Australian outback
Field crews, trade counters and warehouses in five branches around the country, now on one phone system
5 branches
one phone platform, coast to coast
5 legacy PBXs
retired, and their costs with them
One platform
transfer and overflow between states
AI assisted
call routing, summaries and support
The business

The people who connect Australia, connecting their own teams

Optical Solutions Australia, known to the industry as OSA, has been designing and distributing optical network solutions since 2002. It is now part of the Hexatronic Group, a global passive fibre infrastructure leader represented across four continents through more than twenty five companies.

OSA is not a box mover. It runs three purpose built research and development laboratories staffed by network engineers, designs and stages entire networks in house, tests them before they are dispatched, and backs them with calibration, maintenance and national laboratory testing. Its warehouses hold one of the largest inventories of global network brands in the country, and its trade counters put a technical expert in front of a customer in every branch.

That is a business built on responsiveness. When a contractor is standing in a trench, or a carrier is staging a rollout, the answer needs to come quickly, from whoever is free, in whichever branch happens to have the part or the engineer.

Doing the work once, and doing it right, is the OSA promise. That is hard to keep when the phone system stops at the state border.

At a glance

  • BusinessOptical Solutions Australia (OSA)
  • GroupA Hexatronic Group company
  • IndustryOptical network design and distribution
  • In market since2002
  • BranchesBrisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Perth
  • SolutionUniden Voice Over Cloud
  • Websiteopticalsolutions.com.au
The portfolio

Some of the best network technology on earth, stocked in Australia

OSA represents a consortium of globally renowned suppliers, more than forty brands in all, and combines them into tailor made network solutions for carriers, government, industry, utilities and enterprise. If it carries light, power or packets, OSA can design it, stage it, test it and ship it.

Nokia
Ruckus
Hexatronic
CommScope
Prysmian
EXFO
Sumitomo Electric
Calix
HPE Aruba Networking
Molex
Pelco
VIVOTEK
Teltonika
Zyxel
R&M
Rittal
Commend
Korenix
TREND Networks
PATCHBOX
D-Link
RADWIN
Teleste
Microsens

Also stocked and supported: Cal Am, Delta, Litemax, Luxriot, Mean Well, Milliken, MSTronic, Optech, Packetlight, Provision ISR, QuWireless, Rack Technologies, Rose Electronics, Teraspan, 2J Antennas and Arestech, among more than forty brands in all.

Air blown fibre and microduct

Bundled microduct assemblies in four, seven, twelve, nineteen and twenty four duct configurations, with low friction inner surfaces for the longest possible blow lengths, plus direct buried thick walled and tight protected ducts, blown fibre units and the installation tooling to put them in the ground.

Hexatronic microduct systems

Powered fibre

Hybrid cable that carries data and power in the same slim run, down to eight millimetre microducts, with up to twenty four fibres and four to eight copper conductors, rated from minus forty five to plus seventy degrees. It puts cameras, radios and small cells where there is no power to be had.

Powered fibre systems

Access, wireless and edge

Optical line terminals and access platforms from Nokia and Calix, enterprise and industrial wireless from Ruckus and HPE Aruba, industrial routing from Teltonika and Korenix, and surveillance and intercom from VIVOTEK, Pelco and Commend.

Nokia, Ruckus, Calix, HPE Aruba

Splice, test, calibrate and hire

Fusion splicers, OTDRs and certification testers from EXFO, Sumitomo and TREND Networks, backed by OSA's own calibration and maintenance teams working to manufacturer standards, with hire fleets available from every trade counter.

EXFO, Sumitomo, TREND Networks
The challenge and the switch

A national company should not sound like five separate ones

OSA grew branch by branch, and so did its telephony. Each site had inherited its own PBX, its own maintenance contract, its own quirks and its own end of life date. On paper it was one company. On the phone it was five.

Before

Five systems, five islands

  • × Five separate PBXs, each with its own ageing hardware, licensing and support arrangement
  • × No way to transfer a caller from one state to another, so customers were asked to hang up and dial a different number
  • × No overflow between branches, so a busy morning in one state rang out while another state sat available
  • × No shared directory or presence, so nobody could see who was free in another branch
  • × Internal conversations scattered across mobiles, email and whatever chat tool a branch had adopted
  • × Five sets of costs, five renewal dates and five different vendors to chase when something broke
With Uniden Voice Over Cloud

One company, one platform

  • One cloud platform across every branch, with a single national numbering and extension plan
  • Transfer a customer to any colleague in any state instantly, warm or blind, with no redialling
  • Queues that overflow across borders, so the next available expert answers wherever they are sitting
  • One shared company directory with live presence, so staff can see who is free before they transfer
  • Calls, team chat, video meetings and business SMS in one desktop and mobile app
  • One platform, one bill, one Australian support number to call
The switch itself. Uniden Voice Over Cloud is app first, so OSA did not need a hardware project in five locations at once. Branches moved onto the platform on the apps their teams already had on the desk and in their pocket, existing numbers were ported so no customer had to learn a new one, and the legacy systems were retired branch by branch rather than in one risky national cutover.
One national team

Five branches that now answer as one

Warehouses, trade counters and technical staff in five locations, chosen for their proximity to major airports, rail and road transport hubs. The phone system finally matches the footprint.

BrisbaneQueensland
SydneyNew South Wales
MelbourneVictoria
CanberraACT
PerthWestern Australia
Map of Australia marking OSA branches in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Perth

Three time zones, up to three hours apart. With overflow and follow the sun queues, the eastern branches can pick up the early calls and Perth can hold the line at the end of the day, which is exactly the kind of coverage five isolated PBXs could never deliver.

Why Uniden Voice fit OSA

Enterprise reach, without an enterprise rollout

OSA needed the phone system to do what the company already does, which is act as one national operation with deep technical depth in every branch.

Transfer to any state, instantly

A caller who reaches Sydney but needs the Perth engineer is transferred there in one action, warm or blind, on the same call. No hanging up, no second number, no repeating the question.

Queues that overflow across borders

Ring groups and queues span branches, so when one trade counter is flat out the call rolls to the next available person nationally instead of ringing out or landing in voicemail.

AI assisted routing and support

An AI receptionist can answer in an Australian accent around the clock, understand what the caller actually needs, and route them to the right branch, team or specialist rather than making them guess their way through a menu.

Routing rules and any lookup against another business system depend on the integration or API available.

AI call summaries and transcripts

Technical calls carry detail, part numbers, duct sizes, splice counts and site conditions. AI transcription and call summaries mean the next person to pick up the thread starts with the context instead of an empty notepad.

Chat, video and SMS in one app

Team chat replaced the scattered mix of mobiles, email threads and branch specific tools. Staff message a colleague in another state, escalate to a call or a video meeting in a click, and reach customers by business SMS from the same window.

One platform, one bill, local support

Five maintenance contracts, five renewal dates and five vendors became one Australian built, hosted and supported platform, with a single point of accountability when something needs attention.

In the field and on the desk

The work OSA does, and the platform its people run on

From cable drums on the warehouse floor to a crew commissioning a link in the bush, every part of the business now shares one directory, one queue and one set of apps.

Drums of optical fibre and copper cable in an OSA distribution warehouse Warehousing in five branches
Technicians installing network hardware on site Design, staging and field support
Uniden Voice mobile dialler Mobile, for the road and the trench
Uniden Voice desktop app showing recent calls and an AI call summary Desktop app with AI call summaries
Uniden Voice desktop team chat between branches Team chat across branches
We spend our days helping customers build networks that connect the whole country, so it never sat right that our own five sites could not put a caller through to each other. One platform changed that overnight. Our teams now chat, call and meet as one national business, and our customers get to the right expert on the first call, wherever that person happens to be sitting.
MT
Mike Thomas
Chief Executive Officer, Optical Solutions Australia, a Hexatronic Group company
An OSA and Hexatronic field crew on site in the Australian outback

Run your branches like OSA does

One phone platform across every site, transfers and overflow between states, team chat, video and SMS in the same app, and AI assisted routing and support. Australia's number one AI business phone system, built, hosted and supported here. Book your free demonstration.

1300 881 662info@unidenvoice.comwww.unidenvoice.com