Benefits of SIP Trunking and How It Can Improve Your Business

If you’ve spent some time researching business communications options, you may have heard about the advantages of SIP trunking. It’s a trendy choice in the world of telecommunications today. Over 80% of large businesses indicated that SIP was essential to their business in 2015. Demand has only gone up from there.

There are many advantages of SIP phones, and we’ll talk about those later. First, we want to delve into what SIP is, how it compares to VoIP, and what trunking involves. Read on to find out more.

The Difference Between SIP and VoIP

You likely know the basics of VoIP. It stands for Voice over Internet Protocol. It’s a term that describes many different technologies that help create mass voice calls using data networks, such as VPNs or the public Internet. This is an alternative to using a traditional circuit switch network as a means of telecommunication.

When businesses expand and become more successful, VoIP systems commonly route calls over the data network using a private branch exchange (PBX). There’s no need to manage separate voice and data networks, cutting costs.

SIP is a protocol for signaling that provides immediate media and voice delivery. When the correct interconnections and infrastructure are available, calls made by SIP can move between the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and data networks, giving you access to all the mobile, regional, and national carriers.

Understanding Trunks

Understanding the use of SIP is essential, but you might be wondering: how does SIP trunking work? Trunks are similar to phone lines if you want to take it back into the past. The trunk takes the media or voice content and moves it between two ends, which could be phones or terminals for VoIP.

When you work with SIP trunking providers, you get access to an unlimited number of channels. All of them are connected to one virtual phone number. This also means that SIP trunking features can lead to cost savings compared to traditional networks.

The benefits are massive when you integrate your communication services into a data network and manage it on the cloud. You get better ROI savings on the equipment while having options that can drive further cost savings. Another of the SIP trunking benefits is that it eliminates the need to spend money on overly experience infrastructure to use it.

SIP Trunking Benefits

We mentioned a couple of SIP trunking benefits above, but we would like to expand on that now. You might be surprised by how helpful SIP trunking is and want to use it in your business.

High Level of Scalability

One of the most significant SIP trunking benefits is the extreme ability to scale. SIP trunks are made to be highly flexible. You can scale the system you use for communications as often as you need to when a business is growing and changing.

Additional capacity and voice services can be deployed anytime you need them. This works in offices across the globe and never requires you to spend tons of money on infrastructure you must maintain and keep up with.

Unlimited Capacity for Calls

With SIP trunking, you can have unlimited calls at the same time. We aren’t exaggerating; there is no limit when choosing this communication system. You can have simultaneous calls from as many people as you want, all coming to the same phone number.

This can be useful in many situations, but especially at contact centers where hundreds or even thousands of calls come in daily to a single phone number.

Central Communications

For those with several locations, another of the SIP trunking benefits is the elimination of the need for phone lines at each of them. Instead, all offices or branches combine using a central, standalone platform.

This offers enormous cost-savings and less need to spend on hardware. However, to get the same functions as a PSTN, you should choose a provider who offers the following:

1. Provider consolidation
2. Inbound voice
3. Outbound voice for international and domestic calls
4. Access to appropriate numbers for emergency services
5. Number portability

Choosing a typical phone carrier usually gives you only coverage in a single country. A few countries may be covered in some cases, but this is rare. This means working with various providers if you need a global communication system.

This can be long and frustrating, but SIP trunk providers can help. They connect with national networks in every location for services anywhere. You need to choose a phone number for each country and move forward.

Local Access

Since SIP uses virtual numbers, they don’t need to correspond to your location unless there are regulations. You can use SIP trunks and DID numbers for voice and conduct business in any location, even if you aren’t currently there (or have never been there.)

If the network is connected to national infrastructure, you can make domestic calls routed within the country for better privacy, call quality, and less latency. The numbers will pop up from the location in question rather than having an international prefix. Since local calls are picked up more often, this is a game changer.

Advantages of SIP Trunking Over PRI

A Primary Rate Interface (PRI) trunk uses a single telephone wire to simultaneously transmit to up to 23 voice channels. It has a physical connection to the public switched telephone network and uses a circuit-switched model to create connections.

On the other hand, a SIP trunk uses the Session Initiation Protocol to send and receive data. It connects virtually to the telephone network with a packet-switched model for connections. However, it can scale up and down to offer an endless under of data and voice channels.

One of the most significant SIP trunking benefits is flexibility. It uses a simple Internet connection to connect calls. It can handle far more simultaneous calls than PRI trunking. There’s no need to install hardware, and IT has complete control of the technology.

Best Practices for SIP Trunking

Now that you know all about SIP trunking benefits, you might wonder how to get started. The good news is this process is not too complicated. Follow the best practices below for good results.

Check Your Private-Branch Exchange

Not all PBX is made for SIP, which means they cannot be used to carry out SIP trunking. If the exchange comes with an ethernet port, it can be used for this purpose. Even if the PBX isn’t compatible at this time, you can still purchase and use an adapter if you like.

Look at Bandwidth

Since voice and Internet data will be used on the same connection, you need appropriate bandwidth to use SIP trunking. Check out your bandwidth to see how it’s doing. If you note that bandwidth is relatively limited, you may need to improve it before SIP trunking.

Consider Settings

Your router comes with a QoS (Quality of Service) setting. Turning it on makes voice prioritized over other data. This helps reduce calls’ latency and avoid them cutting out when unexpected. Those with old routers may need to purchase a new one.

Select the Channel Number Needed

The price of SIP trunking often varies based on the channels needed. You need to know this to get the best price. However, it would help if you also looked at compliance, coverage, and support options between different providers before making a choice.

Know All Your Options Before Making a Choice

At Esendex, we offer voice broadcasting, SMS broadcasting, SMS APIs, and more. We’re provided communication solutions for top brands since 1999 and support any channel with our software and APIs. Visit our website to learn more about how we can help.