A five-star hotel: replacing analogue telephony with a SIP infrastructure and Wi-Fi handsets, with no new cabling

A five-star hotel in Moldova came to us with a clear one-off task: replace the ageing analogue telephony with a modern IP infrastructure. The particular thing about hotel telephony is that it is part of the guest service, not an "auxiliary switchboard": guests in rooms, reception, room service, engineering, security, restaurant and spa all rely on it. Any unavailability is immediately visible to the guest.

The hotel has its own in-house IT specialist, and the engagement was set up as a joint effort from the start: we own the design, supply and configuration, his team owns the ongoing operation. That is the typical format for a one-off engagement, and a natural one for us — we don't only do long-term operations, we also deliver project work end-to-end, especially when the client already has internal IT and just needs expert delivery.

An additional twist — the building. Pulling new UTP into every room for traditional wired IP telephony was impossible without serious construction work, and the hotel is operating — no one was going to halt the business for renovations. The solution had to use the existing wireless infrastructure.

A complete switch from analogue telephony to a modern SIP stack, without rebuilding the property and without long guest-service outages:

• Replace the analogue PBX with a SIP server with modern routing and call logging.
• Bypass the cabling constraint in rooms — deliver guest and staff telephony over Wi-Fi.
• Pick equipment for the hotel profile: Wi-Fi handsets for staff, in-room telephones for guests, a reception phone with extended speed-dial memory.
• Configure call rights — who can call whom, which directions are available to a guest, to staff, to reception.
• Roll out a sound call-recording policy — record only staff-to-guest conversations (for service quality and incident review), do not record guest-to-guest calls (guest privacy is the priority).
• Hand over the infrastructure for ongoing operation to the hotel's IT specialist, with documentation and training.

SIP server instead of an analogue PBX

The core of the solution is a SIP server on a modern IP-telephony platform with extended routing, queues, call detail records (CDR), recording, and integration with the hotel's infrastructure. The server is deployed inside the client's environment; cutover from the analogue PBX was done with minimum guest-side downtime — the main line work was scheduled overnight, at the hours of lowest load.

Telephony with no new cabling

Since pulling UTP into the rooms was off the table, the in-room and staff phones connect over the hotel's existing wireless infrastructure. Before deployment, we audited Wi-Fi coverage and added access points where the signal was weak. That matters: for voice traffic, weak Wi-Fi doesn't translate into "slow internet" — it translates into dropouts in the conversation.

Equipment selection for the hotel profile

A kit was chosen for three usage profiles:

• Wi-Fi handsets for staff — housekeepers, engineering, security, room service. Light, long-battery, with speed dialling — "press a key, get the operator / colleague / reception".
• In-room telephones for guests — desk units connected over Wi-Fi, with a clear interface for calls to reception, room service, spa, and to outside lines on permitted directions.
• The reception phone — with extended speed-dial memory: one key — the right hotel service or key contact. That removes the routine of looking up extensions and speeds up response to guest requests.

Call rights: who can call whom

The dial plan on the SIP server captures call rights by role:

• An in-room guest — can call reception, internal services (room service, spa, restaurant), and outside numbers within the permitted directions (depending on the stay terms).
• Staff among themselves — internally with no restrictions, by group and by individual.
• Reception — every internal and external direction, plus speed dialling for key contacts.
• Calls between guest rooms — configured as the hotel's confidentiality policy requires (taking into account that guests may not want a direct line to other rooms).

Call-recording policy

Recording is configured on the principle "service quality — yes, guest privacy — non-negotiable":

• Staff-to-guest conversations — recorded. Needed for complaint review, staff training, and investigating disputed situations.
• Guest-to-guest conversations — not recorded. This is a deliberate architectural choice: conversations between guests are their private sphere, the hotel has no moral or legal basis for retaining them.
• Internal staff-to-staff conversations — configured as the hotel policy specifies, depending on role and context.

On the SIP server this is implemented at the dial-plan level: recording is enabled only for calls where one party is an internal staff number and the other is an external or guest number. Between two guest rooms, recording is not activated.

Joint work with the hotel's IT specialist

All key work — design, SIP-server configuration, dial-plan policies, device setup — was done together with the hotel's IT specialist. On handover, we delivered:

• Architecture and configuration documentation.
• The rights and recording policy described in a format that stands without us.
• A runbook of simple operations (adding a staff member, reconfiguring a room) with examples.
• A starter session on day-to-day administration.

After acceptance, the hotel runs the solution on its own and calls us back for one-off tasks or consultancy as needed.

Outcome

• Analogue telephony has been replaced with a modern SIP stack with proper logging, principled recording and richer routing.
• No new cabling and no construction — the solution rides the existing Wi-Fi, with extra access points added where voice quality required them.
• A staff-friendly profile — Wi-Fi handsets with speed dialling, a reception phone with memory for the key contacts.
• A sound recording policy — service quality on staff-to-guest calls, privacy on guest-to-guest calls.
• The solution has been handed over for operation to the hotel's IT specialist with full documentation.

One-off engagements — a normal format for us

We don't operate on the logic of "either you are our long-term client or you aren't". Project-based, end-to-end engagements are a separate, perfectly normal service format. They suit clients who already have their own IT team and need outside specialists for a specific job: a deployment, a migration, an audit, a project. After acceptance the client runs operations themselves; we stay available for occasional consultancy or follow-up projects, but not on a "mandatory retainer".