VOIP for FIFO and Remote Site Workers in Australia

This guide covers VOIP phone options for Australian FIFO (fly-in fly-out) businesses, remote mining and resources operations, offshore facilities, and any business where staff move between a remote site and a metro base. It covers softphone apps for mobile workers, VOIP over satellite connections, site-to-HQ calling, and why hosted VOIP is better suited to this environment than any on-premise phone system.

The FIFO Phone Problem

A standard office phone system assumes staff are in one place. A FIFO business has the opposite reality: a worker might be at a Perth head office one week, at a Pilbara mine site the next, then back in Perth. Their phone needs to follow them without requiring IT support at the remote end or a separate number for each location.

Most FIFO businesses solve this badly. Workers use their personal mobiles for business calls, which means: the business has no record of the call, the client has the worker's personal number rather than the company number, and when the worker leaves the company the business contact history leaves with them. There is a better setup, and it runs on software the worker already has on their phone.

Softphone Apps: Your Phone Number Follows You

A softphone is a phone application that runs on a mobile or laptop and connects to a hosted VOIP service the same way a desk phone does. The worker installs the app on their personal or company mobile. When they make or receive calls through the app, the company's business number appears -- not their personal number. They can be in Perth, at a Bowen Basin mine site, or offshore, and callers see the same business number and reach the same extension.

Softphone apps require only a data connection -- mobile data, Wi-Fi, or satellite broadband. Softphone app availability and pricing vary by provider and plan. For a FIFO workforce, this means zero hardware at remote sites: the worker's mobile is the phone.

VOIP Over Satellite: What You Need to Know

Geostationary satellite connections commonly have roughly 500 milliseconds or more of round-trip propagation delay. Ku and Ka describe frequency bands rather than orbital type; Starlink also uses Ku- and Ka-band antennas. VOIP calls on a high-latency connection suffer from echo, talk-over, and clipping. This is manageable with the right configuration but requires attention.

Starlink low earth orbit satellite has reduced latency significantly -- typically 25 to 60 milliseconds -- and is now widely deployed at Australian remote sites. Starlink can support VOIP, but performance is not identical to NBN: ACCC testing found lower latency than NBN Fixed Wireless but more packet loss and outages. Test voice quality at each site and adjust network or jitter settings if measurements show a problem.

Codec Selection for High-Latency Links

A codec is the algorithm that compresses voice audio for transmission over the internet. The two most common in Australian VOIP deployments are G.711 (uncompressed, high bandwidth, best quality) and G.729 (compressed, lower bandwidth, slightly lower quality but very usable). On a geostationary satellite link where bandwidth is limited and latency is already high, At a 20 ms packetization interval, Cisco lists approximately 80 kbps for G.711 and 24 kbps for G.729 before Layer-2 overhead, so G.729 uses about 30% as much bandwidth.

Codec availability and priority may be configured at the endpoint, PBX and SIP trunk or provider; the codec used by a call must be supported and negotiated by both ends. Your VOIP provider can advise on the correct codec setting for your connection type. For Starlink connections, G.711 is usually fine. For older geostationary satellite, request G.729 support from your provider.

VOIP Over 4G and 5G for Remote Sites

Modern 4G LTE networks carry VOIP calls well. A softphone app using 4G data can deliver call quality close to a standard office VOIP call where signal is solid, though actual quality depends on signal strength, network congestion and latency at the specific site, not coverage alone. 5G improves this further with lower latency and higher bandwidth, though 5G availability at remote mining or resources sites varies by location and carrier and should be checked site by site.

Where 4G coverage is available at the remote site, 4G is typically a simpler and cheaper option than satellite for VOIP calls. Whether a softphone automatically changes between Wi-Fi and mobile data, and whether an active call survives the change, depends on the app and mobile operating system; confirm this behaviour with the provider. Workers do not need to do anything differently -- the app manages the connection.

Site-to-HQ Calling: Free Internal Calls Between Locations

On a hosted VOIP system, all extensions are on the same platform regardless of physical location. A worker at a remote site calling the Perth HQ dials an internal extension, not a geographic number. The call uses the internet connection at both ends and is included in the plan at no per-call cost. For operations that involve frequent coordination between field staff and HQ, this removes a meaningful cost and simplifies communication.

The same applies to calls between different remote sites. If two sites are both connected via Starlink or 4G and both have the VOIP app installed, site-to-site calls are internal extensions and cost nothing per call. Many current Australian mobile plans include unlimited standard national mobile calls, so mobile-to-mobile calls often have no incremental per-call charge; compare total plan costs and exclusions instead.

Why Hosted VOIP Beats On-Premise for Remote Operations

An on-premises deployment does not necessarily require a PBX server at every site: centralized call-processing designs can serve remote phones over a WAN, although they create WAN dependency and may use local survivability equipment. At a remote mining or resources site, hardware maintenance is expensive and slow. A failed on-premise PBX at a remote site can knock out communications for days while parts and technicians are sourced.

Hosted VOIP requires no hardware at the remote site beyond a router and the devices staff already have. The PBX is in the cloud, maintained by the provider. Hosted VOIP removes the on-site PBX, and provider-side maintenance is generally handled by the provider. The remote site still depends on power, its router or satellite equipment, the WAN connection and endpoint devices; failover capabilities vary by service and configuration.

Handling Roster Changes: Staff Moving Between Sites

On a hosted VOIP system, reassigning a worker to a different site requires no phone system reconfiguration. The worker takes their mobile with the softphone app to the new location, connects to the site Wi-Fi or uses mobile data, and their extension works identically to how it worked at the previous site. No number changes, no hardware moves, no IT involvement.

When a FIFO worker rotates off site and back to a home office or Perth base, the same applies: they are reachable on the same extension via the app on their mobile, or they pick up a desk phone at the HQ that is registered to their extension. For ordinary extension routing, a worker can change location without reconfiguring the extension. Location still matters for emergency calling: confirm that the service supports 000 and ensure workers can provide their actual location.

What Most FIFO Businesses Get Wrong

The most common mistake is running two separate communication systems: a traditional office phone system at HQ and mobile phones for all site staff. This means no common call record, no internal transfers between HQ and sites, and no way to route calls to site workers on a business number. A single hosted VOIP platform covers both environments from day one.

The second mistake is assuming VOIP will not work on satellite because of earlier bad experiences with high-latency geostationary satellite. Starlink has changed the calculus. For operations already on Starlink, VOIP call quality is very good and the objection is no longer valid. Test with a softphone app on a Starlink connection before concluding VOIP is not suitable.

The third mistake is not separating business calls from personal calls for site workers. A worker using their personal mobile for all business calls has no call history visible to the employer, no recording for compliance, and no clear separation between work and personal communication. A softphone app with a dedicated business extension fixes this without requiring a separate work mobile.

Your Next Steps

Confirm the connectivity type at each remote site: Starlink, older satellite, 4G, or a fixed link. For Starlink or 4G, standard hosted VOIP configuration works with no special adjustments. For older geostationary satellite, ask your VOIP provider about G.729 codec support and jitter buffer settings. Then set up a hosted VOIP plan, assign extensions to each worker, install the softphone app, and test a call from the remote site to HQ. Most setups are functional in under a day.

For a guide to VOIP call quality on NBN and remote connections, see our VOIP call quality guide. For a comparison of hosted VOIP vs on-premise systems, see our cloud vs on-premise phone system guide.

Comparing the Cost: Mobile-Only vs Hosted VOIP for FIFO Operations

Some FIFO businesses rely on workers’ personal or company mobiles, with the business covering or reimbursing some costs; depending on how the service is configured, this may provide no central phone number or centralised call history. For a 10-person operation, the cost of this approach varies by provider, plan, data inclusions and whether workers are reimbursed for calls or given company SIM cards. The business gets no call records, no ability to transfer calls between workers, and loses access to the communication history when a worker leaves.

Based on advertised pricing from MaxoTel and GoCall, a hosted VOIP system with softphone apps for 10 workers can cost about $100 to $300 per month, depending on the provider, plan, app fees, call inclusions and GST treatment. Workers use their existing mobiles with a softphone app: the business number appears as the caller ID, Depending on the provider, plan, configuration and retention policy, softphone calls can appear in central call logs and may be recorded and stored in a portal. Confirm recording costs, consent requirements and retention settings before relying on this for compliance. The data usage for softphone calls is low: a one-hour call at G.711 uses approximately 90MB of mobile data. On a standard $30 to $40 AU mobile plan with 10 to 20GB of data, softphone call usage is a small fraction of the plan data allowance.

The financial case for a hosted VOIP system depends on mobile-plan inclusions, whether workers still need mobile data, hosted-plan pricing, call volume, setup costs and optional feature charges, and the operational benefits -- central call history, transferable numbers, call recording, and no dependency on individual worker mobiles -- become significant as the roster grows.

For FIFO businesses ready to move to a hosted VOIP system, our comparison of the best phone system for small business in Australia covers the top AU-hosted options, including which providers support softphone apps on mobile data and which ones offer per-user seat pricing suited to variable FIFO rosters.

The VOIP setup challenges for FIFO businesses overlap with the broader remote teams problem: calls need to reach workers regardless of location, and call history and voicemail need to be accessible from any device. For a full breakdown of how hosted VOIP handles distributed team communication, see our guide to VOIP for remote teams in Australia.

For fixed site locations such as camp offices or control rooms where a physical handset is preferred, the Yealink W76P DECT system supports up to 10 cordless handsets on a single base station and registers with AU VOIP providers over SIP. It is a practical option for camp environments where workers need to move between areas without losing calls, and it avoids mobile data dependency for on-site communication.