Standard Form of Agreement – Section B: Hosted Voice (IPV Hosted PBX)

The Hosted Voice Service (IPV Hosted PBX) is a hosted telephone system supplied over an internet connection. The phone system itself runs on Lightning IP's own IP Voice platform rather than on equipment installed at your premises.

Your Service can include:

(a) phone numbers, and the ability to make and receive calls; (b) extensions and users, desk handsets, and softphone applications on a computer or mobile device; and (c) phone system features such as call transfer, hold, hunt and ring groups, an auto attendant or IVR, voicemail, time-of-day and after-hours routing, and call reporting.

We operate the voice platform ourselves. That makes us the carriage service provider for your voice Service — we are responsible for it under this Agreement and under telecommunications law, rather than passing you through to someone else's phone service. We do use other carriers to originate and terminate calls to and from other networks, and to obtain numbers; see Our network and our Suppliers in Section C.

It is important to understand that this is a VoIP service. It does not behave like a traditional copper telephone line in some respects that matter, particularly for emergency calls and in a power failure. The rest of this Section explains where those differences bite.

Your Critical Information Summary sets out your plan, your users, your included calls and your Charges.

Your Hosted Voice Service depends on things at your premises that a traditional telephone line did not:

(a) a working internet connection with enough capacity, and stable enough performance, to carry voice; (b) mains power for your handsets, network switches, router and internet equipment — an old copper line drew its power from the exchange, and this Service does not; (c) a local network — cabling, switches, power over Ethernet, Wi-Fi, firewall and router — configured to carry voice traffic reliably; and (d) devices that are compatible with our platform and correctly provisioned.

If any of these is unavailable or not working properly, your phone service will not work properly either, and in some cases will not work at all.

You are responsible for your own equipment, your cabling and your local network. See Equipment and customer cabling in Section C and What we are not responsible for in Section A. We will help you get it right — tell us what you have before you order, and we will tell you what we think you need.

You can call the Triple Zero (000) emergency call service from your Hosted Voice Service, and we do not charge for those calls. We carry them in accordance with the Telecommunications (Emergency Call Service) Determination and the applicable emergency call services industry code, and we do not bar access to the emergency call service — including where your Service has been restricted or suspended — where it is technically feasible to maintain it.

Because this is a voice service delivered over the internet, the following limitations apply, and you need to know about them before you need to make the call:

(a) It depends on power and on your internet connection. If there is no power at your premises, or your internet connection is down, you cannot make any calls at all — including calls to Triple Zero. (b) Your location is taken from the address we hold for the Service. The address recorded against your number is what is provided to the emergency call service and to emergency service organisations. It is not worked out automatically from the network the way it is for a traditional fixed line. If the address we hold is wrong or out of date, emergency services may be sent to the wrong place. (c) Using the Service away from that address is a real risk. If a handset or softphone is used somewhere other than the registered address, the location passed with an emergency call will still be the registered address. See Using your Service away from your registered address (nomadic use) below. (d) A fault or outage takes the phones with it. An outage affecting your internet Service, your local network, your equipment, or a wide-area power failure will stop the Service working, including for emergency calls.

For these reasons, you should always keep an alternative means of calling Triple Zero — a charged mobile phone is the simplest. Please make sure everyone at your premises knows this, including staff, contractors and visitors. If you are a Business Customer, this is worth covering in your emergency procedures.

See Calling Triple Zero (000) in Section C for how emergency calling works across our Services. If anyone at the premises has a life-threatening medical condition, please read our Priority Assistance and Vulnerable Customers Policy (Section D) before you rely on a VoIP service — we are not able to provide Priority Assistance, and that policy explains where it can be obtained.

We record a service address for each number we supply, and we are required to provide that information to the Integrated Public Number Database (IPND). That is the information the emergency call service and emergency service organisations use to locate a caller.

You must:

(a) give us the correct street address for the place where each Service or number is normally used — not a postal address, a PO box or your head office if that is not where the phone is; (b) tell us promptly if that address changes, including when you move premises, open or close a site, or permanently move a user, handset or number to a different location; and (c) make sure the people who use the Service understand that the address we hold is what emergency services will be given.

Where your phone system spans more than one site, each number or user should carry the address of the site where it is actually used. If you re-allocate a number or a user to another site — which is easy to do on a hosted system, and easy to forget to tell us about — let us know so we can update it.

We will act on an address change promptly. There may be a short period after we make the change before it is reflected in the IPND and available to the emergency call service.

See Phone numbers and public identifiers and The Integrated Public Number Database (IPND) in Section C.

Because the Service is delivered over the internet, a handset or a softphone will generally work from anywhere with a suitable connection — at home, at another office, in a hotel, or while travelling. We do not prohibit this, and for many customers it is one of the main reasons for choosing a hosted phone system.

You do need to understand the trade-off. When the Service is used away from the address registered for that number:

(a) an emergency call will be presented with the registered address, not the address you are actually at, and emergency services may be sent to the wrong location — in an emergency that costs time that matters; (b) call quality depends on a network we know nothing about and cannot test or influence; and (c) some features may behave differently, and the Service may not work at all on networks that block or interfere with voice traffic.

So:

(a) if a device is going to be used from a different address on an ongoing basis, tell us, so we can register the correct address for that number or user; (b) if you are away temporarily, use a mobile phone to call Triple Zero, not the Hosted Voice Service; and (c) if you take the Service overseas, remember that Australian emergency numbers do not work overseas — find out the local emergency number for the country you are in.

If there is a power failure at your premises, your handsets, network switches, router and internet equipment will all stop working, and so will your phone service. If your internet connection is down — because of a fault, an outage, planned works, damage, or a suspension of the Service — your phone service will be down with it.

In both cases you will not be able to make or receive any calls, including calls to the Triple Zero (000) emergency call service.

Some things help, and none of them make the problem go away:

(a) an uninterruptible power supply will keep your handsets and network equipment running for a limited time, but only if the internet connection itself is also still up — and an nbn Service will not work in a power failure at your premises regardless of what you have on a UPS; (b) our 4G Backup Service can keep the site connected when the fixed internet Service fails, but it also needs mains power, and calls in progress will drop at the moment of failover — see How failover actually behaves in the 4G Backup Service terms; and (c) you can set up call forwarding to a mobile number in advance, so incoming calls follow you when the site is down. Ask us to configure it before you need it, because you will not be able to change it once the Service is offline.

Whatever else you do, keep a charged mobile phone available at the premises as your fallback for emergency calls.

We allocate phone numbers to your Service out of number ranges allocated to us under the Telecommunications Numbering Plan 2025. We can allocate single numbers, or a range of direct-in-dial (DID) numbers for a phone system.

You do not own a phone number, and neither do we. You have a right to use a number while the Service it is attached to is active, and a right to transfer it to another provider where the number is portable. See Your rights in a phone number in Section C.

Some practical points:

(a) local numbers are geographic — the numbers we can allocate depend on the area your Service is located in, and we cannot allocate a number from a geographic area your Service does not belong to; (b) additional numbers, DID ranges and inbound numbers are available, and any Charges for them are set out in your Critical Information Summary or our price list; and (c) if you cancel a Service without porting its numbers away, those numbers are returned to the pool and quarantined before they can be reissued. We usually cannot get them back for you. If a number matters to you, port it out before you cancel, or tell us to keep the Service active while you arrange it.

You can generally transfer (port) your existing local numbers to us, in accordance with the Telecommunications Numbering Plan 2025 and the applicable local number portability industry code (C540:2023). When you ask us to port a number, you authorise us to arrange the transfer and to exchange the information necessary to do so with your current provider — see our Privacy Policy (Section D).

To give a port the best chance of succeeding:

(a) the details you give us must match the details your current provider holds exactly, including the account name and the service address — mismatched details are the most common reason a port fails; (b) the numbers must still be active with your current provider. Do not cancel your existing service before the port completes — once a number is cancelled it is usually lost permanently, and we cannot recover it; and (c) you must be the account holder for those numbers, or authorised to act for them.

Please allow real time for this. Porting a business phone service is not like porting a mobile. A single mobile number often ports within hours, but a number range, a phone system with DIDs, or numbers sitting on an ISDN or other legacy service is a complex port, and complex ports commonly take weeks rather than days. They are also scheduled — the cutover happens in an agreed window, not whenever you are ready. We will give you our best estimate, tell you what we need from you, and keep you updated, but we cannot guarantee a completion date, because the timing depends on your current provider and on the carrier that holds the numbers.

Only the numbers transfer. Your current provider's features, voicemail messages and greetings, call recordings, phone system programming and hardware do not come across, and porting may finalise your account with that provider. You may still owe them money, including an early termination charge.

If a port is rejected we will tell you why and, where we can, correct the information and try again. There may be a short interruption at cutover. See Transferring a Service to us in Section C.

If you want to take your numbers to another provider, contact that provider and they will arrange the port with us. You do not need our permission, and we will not obstruct or delay a port because you owe us money — outstanding Charges remain payable, but they are not a reason for us to hold your numbers.

When a number ports away:

(a) the Service associated with that number ends when the port completes, and any hosted phone system features attached to it stop working at the same time; (b) your configuration does not travel with the number — extensions, auto attendant menus and recorded greetings, hunt groups, routing rules, voicemail messages and call recordings stay on our platform and are not transferred to your new provider; and (c) you remain responsible for Charges incurred up to that time.

Before the cutover, download or write down anything you will want afterwards, including voicemail greetings, call recordings you need to keep, and a copy of how your phone system is configured. Ask us if you need help extracting it — we would rather help you leave tidily than have you lose something.

Porting a number away does not, by itself, cancel other Services you hold with us. If you want to cancel other Services, tell us. See Transferring a Service away from us and After your Service ends in Section A and Section C.

We are required to provide information about each number we supply, and the customer associated with it, to the Integrated Public Number Database (IPND). That information is used for the emergency call service, public number directories and directory assistance, law enforcement and national security, and approved research.

You can choose whether each number is:

(a) listed in public directories; (b) partially suppressed, for example with the address withheld; or (c) unlisted (silent), so it is not published or given out by directory assistance.

We do not charge you to have a number unlisted. An unlisted number is still provided to the IPND, because emergency service organisations and agencies with lawful authority must be able to access it.

Where you ask us to list a business name against a number, that name must be accurate and one you are entitled to use.

See The Integrated Public Number Database (IPND) and Directory listings and silent numbers in Section C, and our Privacy Policy (Section D).

Voice is real-time traffic. It is far more sensitive to latency, jitter and packet loss than it is to raw speed, which is why a connection that streams video perfectly well can still deliver poor calls.

Call quality on your Hosted Voice Service is affected by:

(a) the capacity and stability of your internet connection, particularly the upload direction, and congestion on the access network at busy times; (b) the access technology your connection uses — on copper-based nbn technologies, for example, distance and line conditions matter; (c) your local network: switches, power over Ethernet, cabling, and your router or firewall configuration, including SIP handling, NAT timers and quality of service; (d) Wi-Fi, which is inherently more variable than a cabled connection — we recommend cabling desk handsets wherever you can; (e) other traffic on your network, such as backups, large uploads and video meetings, competing with voice; and (f) the network and equipment at the other end of the call, which is outside everyone's control.

We look after our platform, monitor it, and will work through call quality problems with you — including telling you what we can see from our side, such as jitter and packet loss on your calls. We can also advise on how to prioritise voice traffic on your network.

What we cannot do is guarantee call quality where the underlying connection or your local network is not capable of supporting it. We do not offer a call quality service level unless we have separately agreed one with you in writing. See Faults and service assurance in Section C and What we are not responsible for in Section A.

Your Hosted Voice Service can run over an internet connection supplied by another provider. We are happy to supply it that way, and we do not require you to buy your internet Service from us.

Where we do not supply the underlying connection:

(a) we are responsible for our voice platform and the voice Service, not for that connection; (b) we cannot raise or escalate faults with the other provider — you will need to do that. We will give you what we can see from our side, including call records and quality measurements, so you have something concrete to give them; (c) if that connection is unavailable, congested or degraded, your voice Service will be affected, and that is not a fault in the voice Service. Charges for the voice Service continue during such a period; and (d) some things on the other provider's network are simply outside our control, including carrier-grade NAT, restrictive firewalls, and traffic inspection or shaping that interferes with voice.

Where we supply both the internet Service and the Hosted Voice Service, we can look at the whole path end to end, and problems are usually resolved faster. That is a genuine advantage, not a sales line — but the choice is yours.

You can obtain the equipment for your Hosted Voice Service in one of three ways.

(a) Hardware as a Service (HaaS). We loan you the equipment you need — VoIP handsets and devices, and where relevant modems and networking equipment — bundled with your Hosted Voice Service for a monthly Charge. HaaS is month to month. (b) Buy it outright. You can buy equipment from us at signup or, if you are already a customer, at any time. (c) Use your own device. Where our platform supports it, you can use a compatible device you already own.

We do not give equipment away free or bundle it into a plan at no cost, and we do not offer arrangements where you pay equipment off over the term of a contract. What you pay for equipment is set out in your Critical Information Summary or our price list.

Where equipment is supplied under HaaS:

(a) it remains our property at all times, and you must not sell it, give it away, modify it, or reconfigure it for another provider's service; (b) you must keep it in good working order, fair wear and tear excepted, and tell us if it is lost, stolen or damaged; (c) the monthly Charge continues while you have the equipment; and (d) when the Service or the HaaS arrangement ends, please return the equipment to us in reasonable condition within 21 days. If it is not returned, we may charge you for it at the amount set out in your Critical Information Summary or price list.

Where you use your own device, you are responsible for its compatibility, configuration, firmware and security, we may not be able to support it, and some features may not work on it.

Faults, warranty claims and returns for equipment we supply are dealt with in our Equipment Warranty and Returns Policy (Section D). Nothing in this clause limits your rights under the Australian Consumer Law.

Your plan sets out the number of users or extensions on your Service and the number of concurrent calls (call paths) it supports. Your Critical Information Summary records what you have.

When all your call paths are in use, further outbound calls will not connect and inbound callers will get a busy signal or be handled according to your overflow settings, depending on how your system is configured. If your business regularly reaches its limit, tell us and we will size it properly.

The features available on the platform may vary by plan and by device, and not every feature works on every handset or softphone. We may add, change or withdraw features from time to time. Where a change is detrimental to you, we will give you notice in accordance with our Changes to Our Terms and Policies (Section D).

We build your phone system to the configuration agreed when you order. Afterwards:

(a) where we give you portal access, you can make many changes yourself at no charge — and you are responsible for the changes you make and for keeping your administrator credentials secure; (b) small changes we make for you, such as adding a user or adjusting a divert, are usually included in your support; and (c) larger pieces of work — rebuilding an auto attendant or IVR, restructuring call flows, adding a site, or a bulk change to users — may be chargeable.

If a change you ask for will attract a Charge, we will tell you what it is and get your agreement before we do the work. We will not put configuration Charges on your bill as a surprise.

Call recording may be available on some plans or as an add-on. It applies to your Service only where your Critical Information Summary says so, or where we have otherwise agreed to enable it.

If you use call recording, you are responsible for complying with the law that applies to recording telephone conversations. That includes the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 (Cth) and the listening and surveillance devices legislation of the relevant State or Territory — in New South Wales, the Surveillance Devices Act 2007 (NSW). In general terms, you must tell the parties to a call that it is being recorded, usually at the start of the call, and there are further restrictions on how a recording may be used or disclosed. Getting this wrong can be a criminal offence, so please take your own advice if you are unsure.

Recordings frequently contain Personal Information about the people on the call. Where you record calls, you are responsible for handling those recordings in accordance with your own privacy obligations. We handle recordings we hold on our platform in accordance with our Privacy Policy (Section D), and we may be required to disclose them under lawful process — see Security, interception and lawful assistance in Section C.

Recordings are retained on the platform for the period set out in your plan or agreed with us, and are deleted after that. We may delete recordings when your Service ends, so download anything you need to keep before then.

We do not guarantee that every call will be recorded, or that a recording will be retrievable — recording can fail for technical reasons. Do not rely on it as your only record of something important.

Where your plan includes unlimited or included calls — for example to local, national, mobile or 13 and 1300 numbers — those inclusions are provided for ordinary personal or business calling by you and the users on your account.

They are not provided for:

(a) resupply or resale of call services, or carrying another business's or another site's calls through your account; (b) telemarketing, outbound dialler or call centre traffic beyond ordinary business use; (c) artificially inflated traffic, continuous or looped calls, or calling patterns designed to generate revenue from call termination; or (d) any use restricted under our Acceptable Use Policy (Section D).

If your calling is well outside what the plan is designed for, we will contact you, explain what we have seen, and talk about a plan or rate that fits how you actually use the Service. We may charge for calls above ordinary use at our standard rates, or move you to a more suitable plan with your agreement. Restricting or cancelling a Service is a last resort, and we will follow How we apply our rights to restrict, suspend and cancel in Section A. See also Fair use and network management in Section C.

You must keep your Hosted Voice Service secure. That includes:

(a) SIP credentials and device passwords, portal and administrator logins, extension passwords and voicemail PINs — set strong ones, change them from any default, and do not share them; (b) restricting administrator access to people who need it, and removing access when staff leave; and (c) securing your own network — keeping firmware updated, not exposing voice equipment directly to the internet without protection, and controlling remote access.

This matters because toll fraud is a real and expensive risk, not a theoretical one. Attackers scan continuously for phone systems and handsets with weak or default credentials. When they find one they place large volumes of calls, usually to expensive international destinations, and usually overnight or over a weekend when nobody is watching. Charges can reach thousands of dollars within hours, and those calls are carried and charged by other carriers before anyone notices.

There are simple things that help, and we will set them up for you on request:

(a) barring international calling altogether if you never call overseas, or barring particular destinations; (b) barring or restricting calls to premium and high-risk number ranges; and (c) usage alerts so you hear about an unusual spike quickly.

You are responsible for use of your Service and for the Charges incurred on it, including calls made by someone who obtained your credentials because they were not kept secure — see You are responsible for use of your Service in Section A, which also sets out the situations where you are not responsible, including unauthorised use continuing after you report it to us.

We monitor calling on our platform for patterns that suggest fraud or a compromised system — sudden spikes in call volume, unusual destinations, and heavy calling outside your normal hours.

If we reasonably suspect that your Service has been compromised or is being used fraudulently, we may act immediately to stop the loss, including by barring international or particular destinations, or suspending outbound calling. We will take the least disruptive step that stops the harm, and we will keep inbound calls and access to the emergency call service available where it is technically feasible to do so.

We will contact you as soon as we reasonably can, using the contact details on your account, tell you what we have seen, and work with you to secure the Service and restore normal calling. Please make sure the contact details we hold for you are current and reach someone who can act out of hours.

Our monitoring is a safety net, not a guarantee. We cannot detect every case, and detection does not shift responsibility for securing your system away from you — so please do not rely on it as your only protection.

Charges arising from fraudulent calling are dealt with under You are responsible for use of your Service in Section A. In practice, if it happens:

(a) we will investigate what occurred and tell you what we find; (b) we will seek relief from our upstream carriers where there is any prospect of it, and we will pass on any relief we obtain; (c) we will not pursue you for Charges that arise from our error or from a Supplier's error or fraud; and (d) where the compromise originated on your side, the Charges are payable — but talk to us. We would rather agree a payment arrangement than have this sink a business, and for a Consumer Customer our Financial Hardship Policy (Section D) is available.

If you think a Charge is wrong, you can dispute it — see If you think your bill is wrong in Section A. There is no time limit on raising a billing dispute with us.