SIP Trunking for Carriers and Enterprises

David Byrd, CMO and EVP Channel Sales, ANPI ZONE, dbyrd@anpi.com

As often stated in my blogs, cost savings drives the growth of SIP Trunking for SMBs. However, carriers gain through cost savings in terms of equipment, facilities, maintenance and peering by transitioning from TDM to IP. The other key benefit is that carriers are able to offer certain IP applications and services when customers are supported by an IP infrastructure. For example, HD Voice or G.722 cannot be offered across non-IP based networks. Therefore, it is a service that a carrier can offer to its multi-location customer base. If the carrier establishes peering relationships with other IP based networks, then HD Voice calls can also be supported with one carrier responsible for connecting the originating caller and another connecting the terminating caller. To be clear, HD Voice cannot be supported when terminating to a PSTN subscriber.

Enterprises tend to incorporate VoIP and SIP Trunking as part of an application offering (Unified Messaging, HD Voice or Unified Communications). However, in addition to reducing under-utilized PRIs, by leveraging SIP and IP Communications, enterprises can also gain cost benefits by centralizing their communications facilities. This reduces both the cost of operating the network, but also should result in reduced rates due to traffic consolidation. Furthermore, if the enterprise were to incorporate a session border controller, then the diverse dialing requirements of potentially disparate PBXs can also be eliminated. Thus allowing for a single centrally managed dial plan.

ANPI ZONE and most IP based carriers focus their sales on SMBs due to the size of the market, time to decision and speed to implementation. However, all carriers should have sales and implementation plans to support their enterprise customers as they embrace IP Communications and MPLS supported networks. In a recent survey by Webtorials of 300 enterprises, 100 have now added SIP Trunking to their IP networks and have experienced an average cost savings of 33%. Finally, as more employees demand support for a greater diversity of devices that support mobility (smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc.), SIP has shown to be the go to protocol.