Increasingly, businesses are moving away from their older PSTN-based telephone systems towards IP-based solutions. There are many reasons for this, cost savings being high on the corporate agenda. However, there’s also added flexibility and the fact that call quality is now on a par with older systems. In most cases, using IP means adopting a SIP trunking solution to link your business to the wider telephone network.
SIP trunking 101
First of all, what is SIP trunking? Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a means of letting you connect your PABX to the telephone network via the internet rather than using ISDN lines. You still have access to the PSTN network, you’re just getting there in a different way. But that’s not all it can do, a SIP trunk is also able to carry text messages and support multimedia conferencing.
Business benefits of a VoIP wholesale carrier
Primary among SIP trunking’s benefits is lower cost. You no longer have the expensive line rental of an ISDN link and you need only pay for the number of lines you’re using, so it’s easier to scale to meet business needs. You can also benefit from lower call costs.
For many firms, in working with a VoIP specialist such as IDT and using SIP, there may be no additional hardware requirement either, as modern PABXs are usually SIP compatible. Even if you do need a new PABX you can always opt for a cloud-based solution. Again this offers lower costs and greater scalability and control to adapt to the ever-changing commercial landscape.
Indeed, control of and a view into features is a key element of using SIP trunking. You can easily see what features you have available and see how they are allocated amongst your users. Reporting is better too so, for example, you can allocate a particular number to a marketing campaign and be able to track accurately how many calls it receives.
You are able to use numbers from different geographies on the same system, so you can have local numbers for customers in different areas but have the calls handled centrally. You can extend IP-based systems to your mobile users too. They can make use of an app that gives them SIP access, thus saving on call costs and ensuring that calls to their office number can reach them wherever they are. The same applies if your business operates across multiple sites. If you are implementing a unified communications strategy then SIP trunking is a key element of bringing all of your systems together and ensuring seamless interoperability.
We’ve already mentioned the ability to scale. With ISDN this is difficult because you have a fixed number of lines available and adding more is expensive and has a long lead time. With SIP trunking it’s far easier to add extra capacity as you need it with no requirement to install extra lines. It’s easy to remove capacity too, so you can gear up for seasonal peaks without incurring long-term expense.
