SIP Trunking

Overview

What is SIP Trunking?
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a de facto standard that describes the basic signals used to initiate, manage, and terminate communications. For the non-technical, SIP trunking is somewhat akin to a New York egg cream - a beverage that contains NO egg or any cream! A SIP trunk describes the use of a new or existing high speed Internet connection as a replacement for traditional telephone circuits for routing incoming and outgoing calls. Local telephone numbers (normally ten-digit numbers in the US) can be called by people anywhere in the world and ring through to business enterprises using public Internet and SIP trunks. SIP trunks are, in fact, not trunks - dedicated circuits - at all. Rather, the number of SIP trunks that business requires is determined by the number of simultaneous calls rather than a fixed set of wired connections.

How is SIP Trunking different from other telephone systems?
SIP trunking goes beyond voice. It is the industry-backed control standard for multimedia communications or convergence. This includes a broad range of communications: voice, data, video, and mobile. Because SIP trunks are not fixed in capacity, they can grow rapidly to respond to the needs of your busy enterprise. In addition, SIP Trunks can be delivered anywhere served by sufficient levels of Internet connectivity.

What are the Benefits of SIP Trunking to my business?
Geographic Location Independence: Traditional voice is attached to a physical location, but the flexibility of SIP VoIP allows call routing to any IP address worldwide, including home offices and soft phones.

Cost Efficiency: SIP Trunks are far more cost effective than traditional time-dimension multiplexing (TDM) circuits. A typical small business could easily save 25% or much more on their monthly communications bill.

Pure IP connection: A SIP trunk is a VoIP trunk that uses SIP for session control and establishes a pure IP connection. This is important for 3 reasons:

1. The VoIP trunk can handle multi-media (voice, data, video and mobile).
2. The circuit-switched hand-off to the public switch telephone network (PSTN) is not needed – lowering costs by requiring:
   • Fewer hardware interfaces
   • Fewer PSTN circuits
   • Fewer hardware interfaces to maintain
3. Direct SIP trunking to IP private branch exchanges (PBXs) and soft switches means no additional hardware to achieve end-to-end VoIP.
4. Direct Inward Dialing (DID) numbers can be provided from virtually any location in North America and a large number of other countries. This permits enterprises to establish a "virtual" presence with incoming calls ringing at a centralized facility.

SIP trunking applies the latest in VoIP telecommunications to maximize the effectiveness of your business’s strategy for clear, uninterrupted multimedia transmission.

BandTel can markedly improve and extend upon your business’s voice, video, data, and mobile communication, enhancing administrative and client-facing performance. To find out how BandTel’s SIP Trunking solutions can help improve how your business communicates – call 1-800-730-2870 now to speak with one of our experienced business telecommunications consultants.