Every figure below is a published operator price with a source. Everything we cannot price is named rather than estimated. Move the slider and the arithmetic is yours to check.
Set the number of people on your floor who make outbound calls. Channels are sized one per seat, because on an outbound floor everyone dials after the morning briefing. Sharing channels is how systems fail at the busiest moment of the day.
Trunk tier selected automatically from the operator's published table.
| Item | One time | Monthly |
|---|
Trunk: du Business SIP Trunk, published tiers, 12 month term, VAT excluded at source. Build and support at the published hourly rate: the build is a fixed set of phases plus per-seat rollout, so it grows with the floor rather than being one round number. All figures shown include 5% VAT.
Two carriers are licensed to originate your calls, e& and du. Both offer SIP trunking. e& delivers it as a dedicated line into your PBX rather than over the public internet, and the SIP domain is ims.etisalat.ae, documented publicly by PBX vendors and configured every day by integrators here.
The difference is not capability, it is disclosure. du publishes a tier table with prices on it. e& publishes no price for SIP trunking anywhere, on any of its business or enterprise pages. Its only publicly priced voice product is a PRI at AED 2,400 a month plus AED 3,000 installation, which is a different technology and needs an extra gateway.
So the calculator uses the number that can be checked. If you are already an e& customer, ask them for a written SIP quote before assuming either figure applies to you. It may well come in lower.
One thing to plan for whichever carrier you pick: they sell you a line, not a working phone system. A widely reported experience of ordering an e& trunk is being handed credentials, a softphone config, and the statement that they are not responsible for any other system. Everything between that line and a floor of agents who can dial is integration work, and it is the part that is easy to leave out of a budget.
Same seat count, same three year horizon, all VAT included.
| Route | Year 1 | Year 2+ | 3 years | Screening, register, recording |
|---|
The trunk is in every row, because no platform can originate your calls without one. Cloud figures use the published SMB rate of AED 185 per user per month, the platform's own SIP trunk line at AED 400, and AED 4,500 setup (callgear.ae). The outbound row adds the two things an outbound floor needs: a separate outbound calling module at AED 3,690 a month, and Do Not Call Registry screening billed by call volume from AED 500 per 5,000 calls to AED 3,000 per 40,000. Volume is estimated at 55 calls per agent per working day. Carrier hosted voice: AED 125 base plus AED 110 per user line (e& Office Presence). Business SIMs: AED 110 per line list price, not the five month promotional rate, which would overstate that route by a fifth.
On a cloud platform the screening is a subscription and the meter runs with your call volume. Built into your own system it is a fixed cost, and calling more is free. That is the single largest number on this page, and it is the one nobody puts in a quote.
The trunk includes unlimited local and national calling. A cloud platform does not bill trunk minutes either: its own support puts it plainly, that calls over your SIP trunk numbers are handled by your trunk provider, not by them. So whichever route you take, international minutes are bought from the same operator at the same rate, the line is identical everywhere, and it cancels out of the comparison.
It is not zero for your budget. If you call abroad it is your real variable cost, and the only way to know it is three months of your current bills.
The cheapest routes are the ones that leave you exposed. Registering SIMs to the trade licence satisfies Article 4(3) and nothing else: no check against the Do Not Call Registry before dialling, no call register, no recording. Those are three separate violations at AED 50,000, AED 10,000 and AED 10,000 for a first offence.
One agent dialling a registered number, from a SIM in their own name, at 19:00, for a company with no telemarketing approval on file. Not a worst case. The default configuration of a Dubai sales floor.
| First offence, Cabinet Resolution 57 of 2024 | Article | AED |
|---|---|---|
| Marketing calls without prior approval | 4(1) | 75,000 |
| Calling a number on the Do Not Call Registry | 4(5) | 50,000 |
| Calling from a number not on the company licence | 4(3), 4(13) | 25,000 |
| Calling outside 09:00 to 18:00 | 5(3) | 10,000 |
| Up to, one call, first offence | 160,000 |
Second and third offences run to AED 150,000 per item. Where the same violation repeats within six months, Article 3 lets the authority skip the fines and suspend the activity for 7 to 90 days, or cancel the licence.
And since 1 September 2026 there is a second track that no cheque clears. e& publishes black points on the calling number, a barred register at five points, AED 5,000 per number to leave it, and at twenty-five points the trade licence can no longer buy telecom services for any active number, or activate new ones. A floor with no dial tone does not have a compliance problem. It has a revenue problem. The mechanism, with sources.
This is the part that makes the rest of it defensible. Four costs are real and none of them are published, so none of them are in the arithmetic above.
Because those four are missing, the true cost of compliance is higher than this page shows. Which means every payback figure here is conservative rather than flattering. That is the difference between a calculation and a pitch.
A gateway with SIM cards in it costs about AED 1,000 to 2,100 and would cut the trunk line to almost nothing. We do not offer it for outbound marketing, and it is worth understanding why before someone else sells it to you.
A company putting its own business SIMs in a gateway for its own staff is, in substance, an office phone system with a trunk line. Using one to run bulk outbound marketing is a different thing. Under the TDRA VoIP policy the operator can block the service on its own initiative, with no regulator involved and no hearing. The failure mode is not a fine you can argue. It is a floor that stops dialling on a Tuesday morning.
The same applies to any product that shows a number the recipient cannot call back. If the number does not ring back to you, it is not masking, and it is the first thing an operator's fraud system looks for.
Alexander Kuznetsov, VLAN IT. End to end telephony in the UAE, from the carrier trunk to the CRM. The regulatory background to all of this, with primary sources, is in the article.