SIP Trunking Providers Want Your Bandwidth

The telephone industry is changing. Not long ago, the standard setup for most companies was an in-house PBX system managing dozens, hundreds or thousands of phones. For outside calls, the most cost effective approach has been to bring in ISDN PRI trunk lines with 23 local and/or long distance lines each. Even small companies chose key telephone systems that can handle two to six outside lines. Those setups are changing fast.

There are two strong trends in the industry right now. One is cloud based hosted PBX telephone and the other is SIP trunking. They work perfectly together, but you can also have SIP trunking without cloud services.

A telephone trunk is a number of telephone lines all bundled together. This can be a wire bundle, such as a multi-line copper cable. It can also be an electrical bundle on a single line. ISDN PRI trunks, for instance, bundle 23 separate phone lines plus Caller ID and switching on a single T1 line. A SIP trunk is a telephone trunk line designed specifically to work with IP phones in VoIP telephone systems. SIP or Session Initiation Protocol is the switching technology used in VoIP in lieu of SS7, which is used in traditional switched circuit telephony.

So, why are SIP trunks such a hot item right now? It’s because a SIP trunk can be connected directly to your network or IP PBX to bring in multiple lines from your VoIP carrier. On a converged local area network, you are already running SIP. Why go to the trouble to converting to another protocol just to gain access to the public telephone network?

SIP trunks are also how you connect to a hosted PBX system as a cloud service. Companies are rapidly discovering that the per-seat cost of a cloud based telephone service is less than they pay now when you count the personnel, operating and maintenance costs of an in-house phone system. With hosted PBX, you no longer have to invest in new hardware every few years and your system is always being maintained and upgraded by the service provider.

It stands to reason that SIP trunking providers want your telephone business, but why do they want your bandwidth?

The reason that your carrier wants to provide you with both telephone lines and Internet bandwidth is so they can guarantee the quality of your phone calls. With traditional telephony, the telephone and computer networks are kept completely separate and cannot possibly interfere with each other. One of the cost saving advantages of enterprise VoIP solutions is that they use the corporate data network for everything. To make that work, you need to prioritize voice packets so that your phone conversations don’t distort or break up no matter what the computers are doing.

When your SIP trunking provider delivers both telephone and Internet service on your trunk line, they prioritize packets using CoS or Class of Service tags. These tags tell all equipment that recognizes them how to handle different types of traffic to ensure service quality. Not all bandwidth providers do this, so if you mix various line services you can wind up undoing your carefully engineered network quality.

There’s also a cost advantage, especially for small businesses who get both telephone and broadband on one line instead of two. You don’t even need IP phones to take advantage of this service. The provider will install an Integrated Access Device (IAD) that can connect to conventional analog phones and your broadband router.

Now that you know why SIP Trunking providers want your bandwidth, why not find out what sort of deal they’ll make to get it? Request competitive quotes for telephone trunking, dedicated Internet access and cloud hosted PBX services now.

Can You Save 50% On Telecom Costs?

Here we are in the midst of an intractable economic recession and you may still be paying twice as much for your business telecom services as you could be. Need a quick and painless way to cut the budget without having to let people go or cut necessary services? OK, then stop paying so much.

If you are anxious to start saving, get a cost savings evaluation right now and then come back to finish reading the rest of this article. I’m going to explain why a 50% savings is well within the realm of possibility for your company.

First, let’s see where the savings are. Nearly every business buys two principal telecom services. These are telephone and broadband Internet. Larger companies, those with multiple locations, or companies in certain fields will also buy point to point or multi-point bandwidth to link two or more locations. Do you have telephone? Do you use the Internet? Do you have a private link to another location? If so, you have a cost savings opportunity.

Now let’s see why these cost savings are available. First, the telephone and networking industry has become more competitive, especially since federal deregulation of telecom services. There are a lot more players than there used to be and they’re all hungry to expand their customer base. That alone accounts for a major slide in long distance telephone rates and digital bandwidth prices. Did the price of a garden variety T1 line drop by half over the last few years? You bet it did.

This is part of the secret to cutting your telecom bill in half. Business telecom services, like T1, DS3, & OC3, are sold on a contractual basis for one, two or three years. You get the lowest prices with the longest contracts, so the three year contract is often the most attractive. You may or may not be contacted to sign another contract when that one expires. If not, your service doesn’t generally just switch off. You go on a month to month basis for as long as you keep paying your bill. Some companies have been paying the same rate for years and years and have given no attention to comparison shopping.

One reason is that when you bought your original service, there was only one game in town and that was the local telephone company. What you don’t realize is that during that time other competitive carriers have started serving your area, likely with lower prices. Unless one of their sales team happens to call, you probably won’t even know they’ve come to town. More service providers means more offerings and better pricing, but you have to know how to get in touch with them.

The is the first way to get a dramatic cost savings. Do some comparison shopping. You still have to know where to find these carriers, who may or may not have an office in your location. You can try the Yellow Pages, but you’ll have to put in some time and effort to make the calls and compare the offers. Chances are, you’ll probably still miss some good opportunities.

The easier and faster way is to engage a telecom services broker who represents dozens of carriers. You pay the same rates you would if you hunted down the service provider yourself, but you don’t have to put forth the time and effort for comparison shopping. You’ll find that you get fast and friendly service from Telarus, Inc. for competitive telecom pricing. Just be prepared for a shock when you see the offers you’ve been missing.

The other reason that major cost savings are available for the asking is that new types of services have proliferated in the last few years. Ethernet over Copper is now a major competitor with T1 lines. You can generally get twice the bandwidth for the same amount of money if this service is available for your location. If you have a T1 line but are only lightly using it for credit card verification, email and Web access, you can probably save half the monthly cost with 3G fixed wireless broadband. This service is available nationwide and, unlike T1, is practical for temporary business locations like holiday stores, construction sites and conventions.

On the telephone side, that T1 line of yours could be doing double duty. SIP trunking and Integrated T1 combine business phone service and broadband Internet access on the same line. Unlike do it yourself VoIP, this is a carefully engineered solution that assures the quality of your telephone conversations regardless of what is happening on the computers or Internet.

Another recent telephone innovation is hosted PBX. Forget paying for all that telephone equipment and incoming lines. All of that is now handled in the cloud. You pay by the seat per month and your system is always functional and up to date with latest features. All you need in-house are IP telephones and a connection to your cloud provider.

For business applications that need to link several locations or more across the country, MPLS networks can’t be beat. You’ll easily save that 50% cost if you’ve grown your network gradually by simply adding point to point lines as you need them.

Got a few minutes? Want to save a bundle on your monthly telecom bills? Then just enter some basic contact information through T1 Rex and explain what you need. A friendly Telarus agent will be in touch at your convenience and send you a complete range of resources that meet your requirements, along with pricing. It doesn’t get easier and it’s hard to save more.