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Our SIP trunks can provide voice as well as internet and email services using a data network – simpler and lower cost.
- Overview
- Business Benefits
- Business Scenarios
SIP provides a more flexible alternative to ISDN for making business phone calls.
Modern business is increasing its use of data services like email, the internet and online applications. Using SIP means your data connection can be used for voice too. A single, converged voice and data network costs less than separate network connections.
Ideal if…
- You have seasonal or short term demands for increased voice capacity.
- You are purchasing a modern IP-PBX and wish to reduce its upfront and ongoing cost.
- You want to keep your telephone number when you move business premises or close branch offices, even when moving out of the local exchange area.
- You want to consolidate multiple sites into a single network.
- Your business could benefit from a “virtual local presence”, by using geographic number ranges outside your local area code.
Save money: pay less for business phone line rental, business call charges and IP-PBX equipment – SIP costs less than ISDN interfaces.
Flexible: SIP trunks allow you to use geographic number ranges outside your normal area code.
Simplify: by combining voice and data over a single network connection, you can cancel multiple connections and their associated charges.
Quality: high levels of voice quality and we’ll prioritise your calls over other data in shared connections.
Protected: in-built disaster recovery, network resilience and a fast, seamless transfer all ensure business continuity.
Compatible: our SIP trunks are fully compatible with, and rigorously tested and approved by, the leading SIP-enabled telephone systems manufacturers.
Add value: with the right hardware you can -
- Link people across international, national and regional boundaries through one communications infrastructure.
- Have a single mailbox for all your voice messages, emails and texts and one globally portable number for everything.
Here are some typical examples of how SIP trunking can benefit businesses:
A call centre required additional voice capacity to cover a 3 month inbound contract. Because SIP has a much shorter lead time, we were able to provide more voice capacity at short notice, and with just a one month contract, demonstrate 20 fold cost saving over equivalent ISDN30 capacity.
A national franchise had a central 0870 number and locally advertised numbers for their field based franchisees. Because the franchisees were on the road and unable to answer the phone, inbound calls were routed to a central call centre. By using SIP trunks, we were able to eliminate the costs of call forwarding, and demonstrate annual savings of £180,000.
Top Questions
How do I decide between a hosted solution and buying my own phone system?
Both hosted and modern IP-PBX phone systems provide similar communication services. The nature of your business tends to influence which model is best for you...
| Hosted service |
Own phone system/IP-PBX |
| • Many smaller sites/homeworkers |
• Customers with fewer large sites |
| • Few IT/comms skills |
• Own It/comms support team |
| • Prefer outsourcing and operational expenditure |
• Prefer retatining control and capital expenditure |
| • Comfortable using new hosted applications from new suppliers |
• Prefer to deal with brand names such as Cisco, Avaya and Siemens |
Does SIP trunking offer the same voice quality and reliability as ISDN?
Yes, SIP already has identical digital voice quality as ISDN, which should give you complete confidence in using the technology.
Until recently the data networks suitable for accessing SIP services made it more expensive than traditional ISDN but strong demand for data services means that data networks have become commoditised bringing down costs. At the same time their suitability for voice has improved and the reliability and fault repair times for data connections are being aligned with those for voice.
What kind of businesses benefit from SIP trunk solutions?
Broadly, SIP trunks will appeal to any business looking to reduce communication costs and benefit from a host of new communication services. More specifically, any business requiring increased flexibility of location, number and call capacity, clever routing or wishing to gain a virtual presence through an out of area local telephone number will benefit.
What is the future vision for SIP/IP communications?
The major enabler for future communication services is that voice, like data, can be controlled by computer software.
Not surprisingly major software providers such as Google, Cisco and Microsoft have seized this opportunity and accelerated the development of their communication services. Microsoft claims that their latest “Office Communication Server” will modernise telephony as much as emails have replaced the old paper memo.
Nowhere has this change been more evident than in the very latest PBX phone systems. For years VoIP was viewed simply as a way to reduce costs, now the focus is on business transformation. For example, PBX vendors believe that deploying Unified Communications (UC) can increase employee productivity by up to 2 hours a week.
Improvements can be achieved by reducing the time spent looking up telephone numbers, calling unavailable colleagues and playing “voicemail tag”. Additionally, moving communication services to the computer desktop means that new collaboration applications can reduce the need for travel and make teleconferences more productive.
Looking forward, businesses are starting to extend these new communication methods into customer interactions too. For example, if you’ve recently browsed a modern retailer’s website you will probably have noticed the pop up salesperson offering to help via instant messaging, in an attempt to convert browsing to buying.
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