Are you ready to take a sip of SIP? SIP trunking for voice calls,though still in its infancy (in practice commercially for about 5 years), is fast becoming the darling of enterprise voice protocols and high on the tech toy wish list of many of my CEO clients. I predict that SIP will become a major player in voice standards of most business enterprises within 5 years. Why am I making such a bold prediction? The more I study and learn about the virtues of SIP trunking and talk to my clients about their actual experiences, I am convinced that SIP trunking offers a reliable and flexible voice technology option that can deliver huge telecom cost savings with clear advantages over traditional TDM and VOIP technologies.
One of the great things about SIP trunking is that businesses don’t necessarily have to make an immediate choice between fully migrating SIP trunking right away; they can continue to use all or parts of their traditional PBX, VOIP and traditional voice services and current and previous hardware investments in concert with the new SIP voice technology. I.T. managers can simply complement their current business services with SIP and TDM technology and continue to apply those practices in a way that takes better advantage of their unique voice facilities and requirements in concert with SIP trunking. Also, one can continue to use current bandwidth from their current internet service provider without having to change that. All that is needed for this versatility in services and reliable QOS with a SIP trunking gateway (often provided to customers for free by the SIP trunking carrier in exchange for their service).
When we talk about reliability of SIP trunking, SIP trunking is equal to or better than traditional voice calls over the internet. Customers report that calls are crystal clear and often of higher quality than most VOIP systems. SIP trunking also provides greater functionality for versatile applications like unified messaging and disaster recovery. Why? Because SIP trunking is IP intensive, therefore, disaster recovery with SIP trunking most often involves quickly and easily changing to different IP POP destination within the SIP network when a disaster occurs. And, that ability to quickly change voice termination protocols is also very helpful in reducing costs.
There is something for CFO’s to like about SIP to help with their balance sheets. There can be huge telecom cost savings associated with SIP. SIP trunking allows one to have as many concurrent voice pathways as needed at any time, and those pathways can be readily increased or decreased in number. On the other hand, with a traditional PRI arrangement, your enterprise is confined to 23 analog trunks (outbound or inbound or both) and only one single assigned digital pathway. If you use only half of those PRI trunks, you are wasting half the cost of the PRI. With SIP trunking, you simply change or order the highest number of pathways you need for a specific amount of time, and those numbers of pathways can be tweaked daily or hourly if you wish, depending on your voice traffic needs and how often they change. With SIP, you don’t need to order and install or turn up a PRI if you need additional voice traffic; you simply turn up the SIP bandwidth faucet or number of pathways with your service provider. The same goes with lower voice traffic. Again, you tweak the number of virtual pathways you need to comply with your call traffic. If your organization is large enough, you can also pre-order wholesale SIP minutes, which are essentially pay-as-you go SIP cost arrangements. How does less than a penny per minute for reliable long distance sound? How about the same cost for calls across the ocean to Europe and Asia? These kinds of pre-paid arrangements work well for very large enterprise customers and smart wholesale telecommunications providers, who buy huge blocks of wholesale SIP minutes, then resell them to smaller customers at a markup. The calls are clear and the cost is cheap. So we’re seeing a lot of small operators become telecommunications carriers using SIP.Another cost advantage of SIP in this scenario is that companies can easily utilize least cost routing or route calls to their on-net carrier of choice by way of the cheapest telecommunications point of presence or POP.
Although SIP is not effective or recommended for businesses with predominately large volumes of local calls, SIP can be extremely advantageous for any business routing calls across the country or to Europe.
In summary, unlike in the past, rather than having to gulp down the new technology, why not take your time and take a gradual sip of SIP technology?
Is your enterprise interested in learning more about the advantages of SIP trunking technology for telecom cost savings? Contact a SIP trunking consultant today for a free consultation regarding how SIP technology help your enterprise realize lower telecom costs.
