Voice over IP (or VoIP) technology is rapidly capturing a major share of the telephone business. VoIP has a number of advantages over traditional voice services, including the ability to route voice traffic over the same circuits used for business data communications—dynamically allocating available capacity and adding a wide range of new calling features and capabilities that would be expensive or impossible to implement on legacy telephone networks.
What are SIP Trunks?
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is the primary mechanism used for communication within VoIP devices and networks. In its most basic form, a SIP trunk is a connection between SIP user premises equipment and a provider’s SIP network, providing a path for both communication (voice calls) and signaling (dialing instructions and call supervision/control). Unlike traditional phone networks, with SIP the total bandwidth can be shared, giving much more flexibility in adapting the available bandwidth for changing amounts of voice and data traffic. SIP trunks can be delivered over many different types of network connectivity, even sharing a connection with internet data service to provide further cost savings.
SIP trunks offer a direct connection between a provider’s network and a customer’s devices, for significant cost savings and business process improvements.
Requirements for SIP trunking
Upgrading an existing voice network to take advantage of SIP trunking technology does not require wholesale replacement of existing equipment. Businesses that want to use SIP trunking must have SIP-enabled equipment but in many cases, existing PBX equipment already supports or can be upgraded to provide SIP capabilities.
Many installations use preexisting handsets and wiring for an initial launch, upgrading in the future when the business is ready to take advantage of the advanced capabilities of a fully SIP-compliant cloud system like Skyway Sweet UC or Microsoft Direct Routing.
WAN network requirements
Another key element required for a SIP trunk deployment is a suitable corporate WAN network, which can drive success or failure for the entire SIP trunking project. The corporate WAN must have enough bandwidth to handle the existing data with enough available capacity to handle the additional load of the SIP traffic. It is also highly recommended that the WAN supports preferential priority for SIP voice, using quality of service (QoS). This keeps delay under control and helps shield SIP traffic from the bottlenecks that might be experienced by other forms of data traffic, which could cause a drop in call quality that would be noticed by users. And, since voice communications are crucial to many businesses, redundancy through SD-WAN Failover is recommended.
SIP Trunking allows for significant cost savings and benefits in several areas:
- Cost savings from many factors including reduced telecom network charges and streamlined operations in a covered voice and data network. Businesses can keep capital expenditures in check while future-proofing communications, adding IP-based capabilities to a legacy PBX without a costly upfront investment. Skyway’s SIP plan includes allowable bursts which means you don’t pay for unused capacity. A business only has to provision for normal call requirements, not unexpected peak usage.
- When ready, add Unified Communications like Skyway Sweet UC or migrate to Microsoft Teams, where voice, video, email, text and other messaging technologies are combined to provide greater flexibility for users by enabling new ways to transfer information and manage connectivity.
- Easily integrate multiple locations or scale a business with the same pool of SIP channels. Instead of ordering a quantity of phone lines for each location, a single SIP trunk could suffice for an entire company, with multiple SIP channels and DID phone numbers. The company shares the same pool of dial-tone, improving efficiency and reducing your overall costs.
- When different locations are connected using SIP telephony over a WAN, cost savings are immediately generated by removing carrier trunk connections at each remote site, which can substantially reduce the monthly costs paid for telephony connections. Further saving can accrue with the elimination of carrier networks for interoffice calling via private WAN backbone.
- Business continuity and disaster recovery, where the right physical configuration in conjunction with intelligence in the network can be leveraged to provide uninterrupted communications and alternative means to stay connected for employees in the event of system bottlenecks or failures.
- Voice network management like Skyway’s Modern Edge, in which you optimize and allocate your network resources based on your business priorities. Scale your business with easy deployment and zero touch provisioning built into the management control centre.
As more businesses adopt unified communications technologies to improve productivity, and as they deploy more robust systems for business continuity and disaster recovery, the incentives to transition to SIP technologies will only increase.
Considering the potential for cost savings, the improved business practices, and the choices that exist for upgrading an existing voice network, SIP trunking is certainly worthy of a close look by CIOs and IT managers. The SIP trunking market is rapidly growing, and is set to explode in the years ahead. This is due to a number of factors, including the widespread availability of PBX and other equipment that supports SIP technology, growth of provider offerings and, most importantly, the substantial cost savings. As more businesses adopt unified communications technologies to improve productivity, and as they deploy more robust systems for business continuity and disaster recovery, the incentives to transition to SIP technologies will only increase.