You may have already heard of SIP trunking but you probably don’t have any idea what it is. From a practical point of view, whenever you go to make a call in an SIP trunk-installed phone system, your call is directed to a telephone exchange, which is known as the PBX. The PBX’s job is to communicate with the phone network and with SIP. It acts as the “trunk” that assumes the role of the public telephone network.
What SIP Is
SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) is a technology that allows the convergence of your company’s phone and data lines through Internet connectivity. You will also be able to set up connections between devices such as computers, PBXs, phones, servers and video conferencing units. Whenever you have a trunk deployed within your company you simply are not going to be using traditional TDMs, PRIs or PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) in order to make your phone calls. Instead, everything is routed through the Internet.
Today SIP Trunking is no longer limited only to voice. Instead, it is able to support a lot of different types of services, including instant messaging, telephone or video conferencing, video broadcasting and multi-player gaming. All of these telecommunication lines are coursed through the Internet, so there is no need for expensive ISDN and PSTN circuits.
SIP’s Relevance
SIP is important to any business that values voice communication and makes or accepts phone calls on a regular basis. There are numerous ways in which your business can benefit from this technology, including:
- You will be able to save money on all of your local and international phone calls since they are made through the Internet. This means that you will no longer have to pay monthly phone bills since Internet connectivity is much more affordable today, even at high bandwidths, and SIP ensures that you will be able to take advantage of that. Of course, there are numerous factors (i.e. number of calls made, when the calls are made, what numbers are being called, how long the calls last) that will affect just how much you can save. For this reason you will need to show your recent phone bill to a SIP trunk provider in order to get an accurate estimate of your savings.
- SIP Trunks can be used regardless of the company’s size or how many phone calls need to be made.
- Voice and data can be integrated so that the can be controlled or managed depending upon your company’s needs at specific times. For instance, you can pool phone and Internet connectivity so that you will be able to handle more calls during peak hours.
- You won’t need any hardware to connect to your PBX system like you would with traditional ISDN lines. This alone can save you a lot of money.
These are just some of the many benefits that you will receive from SIP Trunking. Now you should be able to clearly see what you are missing out on.
Call Quality
Once you have your SIP trunking properly set up the call’s quality will be as, if not better than, your regular phone service. However, if an expert does not set it up for you, then you will probably have packet loss and latency in your connection. This will negatively affect your call quality.
How Consumers Can Benefit
Consumers with a standard Internet connection will not get a high quality call signal. Therefore, the cost reduction will not be advantageous to you. If you don’t mind having some fluctuations in your call quality, then you use this method. Just make sure that you have a back up just in case it fails miserably.
In Conclusion
SIP trunking is definitely not a fad. There are a lot of big businesses (i.e. Cisco, Verizon, Microsoft, Mitel, Siemens, Avaya, Panasonic, Nortel, Samsung) that depend upon it today. If you want to be one of these businesses, you will need to get an Internet connection of 2mbps for less than 30 channels and for in excess of 30 channels. It really will only take this long for you to be set up and ready to use SIP trunking in your office too.