Sangoma Solutions Reduce International Calling Costs for ANTlabs

The Customer

ANTlabs Pte Ltd is a major player in internet business enablement. A market leader in service gateways in the Asia-Pacific region, ANTlabs offers award-winning technology solutions for the hospitality sector, large-venue network operators, and telecommunications. For more than 16 years, ANTlabs has enabled viable business models and faster returns on investment for telecommunications providers, ISPs, airports, hotels, campuses, shopping malls, stadiums, and convention centers through comprehensive solutions incorporating key patented technologies. ANTlabs solutions meet current and future requirements with scalability, telecom-grade reliability, and enterprise-grade performance.

Business Challenges

Lantone Systems Pte Ltd, Sangoma’s partner in Singapore, played a major role in showing ANTlabs how a Sangoma PBX could be configured to let employees connect to the system from a remote office or via mobile devices, facilitating the company’s workforce mobility. Lantone also demonstrated the High Availability (HA) solution, a crucial requirement for the customer, backed by the ability to provide 24/7 technical support in the event of a failure, as well as regular maintenance. To strengthen the overall security of the phone system, Sangoma’s session border controller (SBC) was integrated into the network design to filter incoming calls from the Internet router. ANTlabs was convinced of the benefits the Sangoma solution would provide and engaged Lantone Systems to transition to the new phone system.

Sangoma Solutions

The main systems deployed were:

Sangoma FreePBX 100 appliances in HA.
Sangoma Enterprise session border controller.
Sangoma Vega FXS analog gateway.

The system was built on a high-availability configuration to ensure continuous 24/7 availability for ANTlab’s phone system, as well as support for an analog fire alarm system in the company’s building. While ANTlabs initially relied on the analog phone lines used by its former Cisco system, Lantone Systems implemented a more reliable alternative with Starhub SIP lines and routers, along with a redundant Hoiio SIP trunk as a backup option. The session border controller (SBC) was deployed to ensure security and facilitate incoming external calls from employees’ personal mobile phones. An analog Vega gateway was deployed to support fax capabilities.

The Results

To make the most of the legacy system, the Sangoma PBX installed in ANTlabs’ Singapore office was linked to its existing Cisco system, still in use at its Malaysia office. This enabled ANTlabs to achieve huge savings on its phone bills by allowing low-cost calls over the Internet between the two international branches. The complete yet cost-effective installation successfully introduced the modern IP telephony features ANTlabs highly sought, in addition to its stated business requirements. Sangoma solutions, skillfully deployed by Lantone, gave ANTlabs a considerable boost in overcoming the challenges posed by the limitations of its legacy PBX.