As more businesses seek to lower their costs while gaining the collaboration benefits of unified communications, they are moving to SIP trunks to connect their business phone systems to the outside world.
Traditionally, T-1 and ISDN Primary Rate Interface (PRI) circuits have been used for trunking, but the popularity of SIP trunks is growing as the service becomes more widely available and more stable. In fact, according to Infonetics’ market survey, 38 percent of companies are using some type of SIP trunking today, and that number is expected to grow to 58 percent by 2015.
Get Your SIP Trunks On
Here are four reasons to consider using SIP trunking the next time your communications service contract is ready for renewal.
1. Maximize flexibility and capacity.
Using SIP trunks allows you to run voice, video and data traffic over the same IP network connection, which enables you to consolidate WAN connections and make the most of the bandwidth you are buying. SIP gives you greater flexibility in other ways too. With traditional circuits, you have to buy in blocks of 23 trunks in North America (or blocks of 30 in Europe). If you only need 26 trunks, you will need to pay for 46. With SIP, you pay for the number of trunks that you actually need. Plus, many of the SIP trunking services support busting, so you can pay-as-you-go if your traffic suddenly spikes. SIP proves to be more flexible to changing demands.
2. Reduce communications costs.
Organizations that adopted SIP trunking saved an average of 33 percent a year on telecom costs, according to a 2012 Webtorials SIP Trunking State of the Market Report. In addition, moving to an IP PBX can enable you to reduce long distance costs through least-cost routing.
3. Enable collaboration services.
More than a cost savings, SIP is an enabler of collaboration services by extending voice and video between your organization and the service provider’s network. Using SIP positions your organization to use the full suite of unified communications, including videoconferencing, collaboration, and presence.
4. Consolidate network connections.
SIP can make it easier to interconnect data centers. And you can eliminate many of the separate analog and TDM trunks that are servicing your company’s headquarters and branch offices. You can use SIP trunks at your head office or data center to service all of your branches around the country or world. This makes it simpler to route calls if you operate a call center or have a follow-the-sun workflow. Alternatively, each branch office can have its own SIP trunk connection, which may provide greater resiliency and reduce traffic across the wide-area network.
4 Considerations Before You SIP
Here are four considerations before you begin using SIP trunking at your organization.
1. Take security seriously.
When using Internet based SIP trunking providers, your phone system is basically connected to the Internet. It is essential to use a SIPaware firewall or session border controller (SBC) to protect the connection between your company’s network and the service provider’s network. Without a firewall or SBC, your network has greater exposure to distributed denial-of-service attacks, service thefts and fraud. These solutions hide your internal network and users’ IP addresses from the outside world as well as monitor the traffic in and out to block improper communications. Even if you use SIP trunking from a tier 1 carrier, you should still take security seriously because their systems could become compromised.
2. Interoperability can be a challenge.
Different vendors and service providers have implemented SIP a little differently from each other and these different flavors can cause interoperability speed bumps. The industry is making progress on interoperability through efforts like the SIP Forum’s SIPconnect, but you should still pay careful attention to interoperability and test thoroughly. When choosing a SIP service provider, also verify that the service is certified to work with your IP PBX.
3. Limited geographic availability.
SIP trunking services are more widely available than ever, but they may not have Direct Inward Dial (DID) numbers available everywhere you have locations.
4. Support for fax.
Different SIP trunk providers may use different methods for handling fax, and others may not support fax at all. Be sure to inquire as you select your SIP trunking provider.
Topics: Customer Support
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