SIP Trunking Opportunity

SIP Trunking is a relatively new trend in telephony. It is the capability to purchase PSTN services and have them delivered over IP connections rather than traditional T1/E1 PRI connections. Although SIP Trunking does not require a centralized deployment model, a centralized telephony deployment does introduce the opportunity to deploy SIP Trunking more easily. The combination of centralized telephony and SIP Trunking is ideal for realizing cost savings in PSTN Trunking.

Many organizations have a vast number of PRI connections delivering PSTN services. The problem with PRIs is that they come in only one size (23 voice channels per trunk in the U.S.). SIP Trunking allows organizations to have more control over how many channels are purchased. In simple terms, if you were a mid-size organization that needed 25 voice channels to support your call load, this would result in two PRIs. Those two PRIs would require two T1 connections. The end result is double the cost for a very small capacity increase.

These are the two ways in which SIP Trunking allows you to reduce your PSTN costs:

• Reduction in the Number of Voice Channels—Organizations that deploy SIP Trunking typically see a 40% reduction in the number of actual voice channels, because the capacity is much easier to predict and control. This reduction in voice channels also comes with a cheaper, more flexible delivery method: IP. Many times this is delivered through an MPLS connection from the provider directly to the organization’s data center, but there are services that target small to mid-market customers that will also deliver these services over the Internet.

• Shared Usage—Organizations can reduce their voice channels even more in a centralized telephony model. When the PSTN trunks are centralized, they can be shared across all of your sites. This works very well in organizations spread across multiple time zones. In fact, SIP Trunking services can be tweaked based on time zones to provide capacity where it is needed, resulting in a large amount of cost savings.

• Flexibility—SIP Trunking introduces the ability to increase or decrease capacity as needs change. TDM connections would often require additional physical line configurations to accommodate capacity changes. With SIP Trunking, this simply becomes a matter of provisioning by the provider in many cases. SIP Trunking providers are also able to offer advanced functionality including failover routing, and multiple area codes and international numbers on the same connection, something that TDM trunks are simply not able to do.

The areas previously described are the most common areas in which organizations can realize cost savings and ROI from deploying a UC Telephony Solution. The level at which ROI is realized will depend on how willing the organization is to adopt the centralized and shared model for the telephony infrastructure.