Telnyx vs. Telstra: Who to Choose for Your Voice Needs?

Telnyx has launched in Australia and we’re excited to be here! With so many companies out there we know it can get confusing, so we want to make it easy for you to compare us with your existing providers. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be developing comparison guides that will help you understand why we are the right communications provider to choose for your business.

Choosing a CPaaS provider for your business is no easy task. But when done right, these platforms can help your business to automate and streamline its communications channels to prime your business for growth.

To start, we’ve developed an in-depth comparison of Telnyx and Telstra, two communication providers with enterprise-grade carrier networks. We’ve outlined the key differences in product features, network, numbers, price, and API usability to provide you with the information you need to make an informed decision on who to partner with for your communication needs in Australia and globally.

Network: Telnyx vs Telstra

Over the last number of decades, Telstra have developed a strong private network in Australia that has given them advantages over other players in the market. Now, that is all changing. The rollout of the national broadband network (nbn™), has forced Telstra to separate its retail business, which is customer-facing, from its network business, which manages its infrastructure, to satisfy anti-competitive laws. As a result, Telstra has had to hand over the copper wire network that connects most of Australia’s homes to NBN Co. Ltd.

But what does this mean? The Australian government has ensured that the nbn is a wholesale-only, open access, telecoms platform that does not show preference for one provider over another. This means that Telstra has the same access to the nbn as any other internet services provider in Australia. This affects customers as they have their data running through busy public lines which increases the likelihood of packet loss, lag, and jitter which in turn can lead to reduced call quality.

At Telnyx, we’ve built our own global, private IP network, to pull your traffic off the public web and carry the media across our own fiber. This allows us to ensure that your packets are exposed to as few public hops as possible- reducing the number of hops means less of the overhead transmission that diminishes call quality. In addition, because your media is not competing with other media over a busy public network, there is reduced latency and every call is crystal clear.

But what about networks outside of Australia? While Telstra still holds its private network outside of Australia, this ‘private network’ is indeed a busy one. Telstra manages close to 30% of all Asian internet traffic on their network, which, even on a private network, can cause issues with call quality.

Voice: Telnyx vs Telstra

Telnyx and Telstra both offer enterprise-grade SIP trunking as core products for businesses. However, that’s where the comparison ends and they differ on price, scale, and uptime. The table below highlights the differences between the two companies.

Pricing: Telnyx vs Telstra

As with most things in business, price can be a huge factor when considering one product over another- and for good reason. When scaling your business you’ll need to keep costs to a minimum and shouldn’t expect your basic services to eat up ROI. With that said, let’s look at some key differences between the way Telnyx and Telstra price their products.

SIP Trunking

In general, SIP trunking with Telnyx is priced on a ‘pay as you use’ model, with an easy-to-understand rate deck.

Telnyx Pricing in AUD

In addition to being highly competitive on price, Telnyx has also designed an easy-to-use, self-service platform so you can take control of all your SIP connections from day 1.

With Telstra, it’s a bit more complicated. The first thing to note is that Telstra offers two enterprise-grade SIP products:

1. Business SIP- designed for companies who are switching from ISDN voice services to an IP voice alternative.
2. SIP Connect- designed for businesses already on an IP voice service.

When signing up to Business SIP customers are required to first choose a calling plan- small, medium, or large. With each plan, there is a monthly cost per line and a minimum term of 12 months. Let’s take a closer look:

Telstra Business SIP Pricing in AUD

The minimum monthly cost of the cheapest plan would be $108/ month. If you need to cancel the service before the end date or you cancel more than 30% of the call capacity stated in the contract, your business will be liable to pay an early termination charge if you cancel the service or you. SIP Connect customers are also liable for the same restrictions and chrages. These subscription models and charges can be difficult to pay when scaling a business, especially in a highly variable economy.

Number Provisioning

In order to send or receive calls, you’ll need to have a supply of numbers associated with your SIP connections. You can get these numbers through number porting, or you can buy them from your carrier. Let’s see how much it would cost to buy individual numbers with both Telnyx and Telstra.

Telnyx owns a deep inventory of global numbers that can be easily searched for and bought through the portal. Each local Australian number costs $2.00 on the Telnyx platform. Toll-free numbers can be provisioned for $10.00. All numbers on the Telnyx can be searched by capability, including SMS, MMS, Fax, Identity Services, and Emergency Services prior to purchase, so you know what you are getting before you buy.

Number Search in the Mission Control Portal

Easily navigate between the tabs to see what numbers you currently have on the Telnyx platform, or to start a port request.

Telstra also provision numbers and have number porting capabilities. Telstra’s pricing for its individual SIP numbers is a $4.00/ month recurring subscription that is added to your voice bill.

In short, Telnyx offers a more flexible, cost-effective solution than Telstra when looking at the pricing options for both SIP trunking and number provisioning. Apart from being clearly cheaper than Telstra, Telnyx’s pricing structure is also more suitable for businesses that are looking to scale and don’t yet know how to estimate their future usage or budgets.

Numbering: Telnyx vs Telstra

Number Porting

As we touched on above, before you start sending or receiving calls and messages, it’s important to have numbers that are functional. While you can buy new numbers directly from your new provider, you can also keep your old ones. If you already have numbers that you want to keep then you can go through a process called number porting. This occurs when customers want to change their phone company but keep the same number. Let’s take a closer look at how both Telnyx and Telstra manage this process.

Telnyx has developed an automated number porting product, FastPort, which allows users to have a hassle-free porting experience. The Telnyx API will complete the entire porting process without having to interact with your previous providers. This service provides real-time data validation and on-demand activation so there’s no waiting period to get your porting process approved. You can also schedule your ports ahead of time, edit your requests, and track number status in realtime.

On the other hand, both Telstra’s enterprise-grade SIP trunking products—SIP Connect and Business SIP—have specific limitations around number porting which could cause issues for your business continuity. If you wish to port-in numbers from another provider, this must be done in a block or in multiple blocks of 100 contiguous numbers. This could mean having to reorganize your numbers prior to porting.

Telnyx’s ability to streamline both the number provisioning and number porting experience means that you don’t have to waste time on these basic processes that are required for your business to utilize SIP trunking in a manner that will not affect your business.

Why Developers Choose Telnyx over Telstra

The Telnyx platform and the Mission Control Portal was built for developers, by developers. We give you the power to control and configure all your communications from the Mission Control Portal and can start building your communications, minutes after sign-up. We’ve developed a number of code converter tools— such as the Twexit API and TexML Translator to make integrating to the Telnyx platform hassle-free.

A major thing to consider when choosing an API provider is ensuring that they have adequate developer support and documentation so that your developers don’t have to waste time and money figuring out the basics. At Telnyx, we pride ourselves on continuously producing extensive developer documentation and helpful video tutorials to help your business have a smooth transition to our platform, all readily available in our developer center. We also run a developer Slack community where your developers can ask questions directly to us and other developers using the platform and get answers almost immediately.

The Telnyx Developer Center

While Telstra has a developer portal, there are limited API’s available for configuration. For example, you cannot connect your SIP lines or provision/ port numbers through their portal. This means you, your developers—and ultimately your business—is dependent solely on the Telstra support team to add new SIP connections or numbers, which can cause increased lead times on simple tasks.

Ready to make the switch? Sign up for a Telnyx account today for free. Or, speak with one of our experts to discuss migration.