Why use SIP trunks?  Thought you’d never ask!

Briefly, some key benefits are…

• Cost savings
• Agility, Scalability
• Simplify, Consolidate and Manage Telecom Resources Efficiently
• Maintain Business Continuity

Take cost savings for example.  How many circuits do you have connected to your legacy PBX?  Local trunks, a long distance trunk… then you have your Internet and WAN connections perhaps.  Imagine if you could consolidate the local, long distance and Internet or WAN into a single data circuit.  If you wish to add redundancy, which is always a good idea from the standpoint of business continuity, then add for that.  As you consolidate and more efficiently utilize circuits and hardware, reduce overall hardware and all associated costs.  Additionally, reduce or eliminate charges for long distance calls within the US.

Good question! Glad you asked!

You may be aware of SIP and its use in VoIP telephony. SIP is an acronym for Session Initiation Protocol which is the protocol used in VoIP calls for call session setup and tear down. SIP trunking is a protocol or method used to provide logical communication paths or call paths for VoIP calls between your PBX and your SIP trunk provider or carrier.

SIP trunking works over your data network, over the public internet or a private WAN connection between your site and your SIP trunk provider.  Essentially, in simple terms, you can take an existing data connection and use an IP connection to connect your PBX to your SIP trunk provider.  It would be somewhat the equivalent of using an PRI connection to connect your PBX to your PSTN provider.  Your SIP trunk provider has a data network with interconnections into the PSTN.  Your SIP trunk provider servers are a gateway to the PSTN.

Today, we take for granted that we can keep our telephone numbers when we change communications service providers—something that just wasn’t possible only a little over 15 short years ago! It wasn’t that long ago that with a phone number, you could identify the state, city and even neighborhood where the person lived. Not so today! More than ever before, consumers, both individual and business, have telephone numbers that serve as their identities and they depend on multiple types of devices that are connected to a single telephone number. Thanks to the local number portability act or LNP and associated technologies, today you can take your number with you when you move! It’s ‘port’able!

When you place an order with a carrier to ‘port’ your phone number the order involves three key organizations besides you, 1) the winning carrier which is your new carrier, 2) the loosing carrier, which is your current, soon to be old carrier 3) a third party organization that manages the telecommunications industry LNP database. This organization is known as the NPAC or Number Portability Administration Center. In order to enter, track and execute your LNP order you, the consumer, must provide accurate information. If any of the information provided does not match carrier records, delays occur. Below are a few things you should be aware of when porting your numbers….

During a company move you’ve got a lot to do, a lot to worry about! A company office move has a lot of moving parts and especially as the owner or manager of a small business you’ve got a lot of moving parts to watch, all the while keeping an eye on your core business! It’s a lot to byte off!

To name just a few concerns, where will you move to? Who will move your business furniture and specialized equipment? How will you protect your business from the loss of your business critical proprietary information? How will you minimize or avoid downtime or the loss of business during your move? What about technology like your connection to the Internet? Will you be able to keep your internet IP addresses? Does it matter? What about phone numbers? Is this the the right time to consider changes to technology? Could there be opportunities for significant cost savings or perhaps enhancements that will improve organizational effectiveness or future proofing my company? Who will keep an eye on business while you focus on the move? Would it be better to get help to keep managing your move or at least the technology aspects so you can stay focused on your business? You’ve got a lot to consider!

Has your company announced a move and made you responsible for moving the technology?  That’s enough to send many folks running to brush up their resume!  You and I both know though that professionals will buck up and get through it but it’s a lot of work, a lot of responsibility, and failure is not an option!  On the flip side though, it’s a nice feather in your cap when you run a successful move!

My first experience with a move was early in my career when I was a windows server admin at Honeywell-Measurex and participated in moving our headquarters data center from one building to another.  My role was minor.  I learned something though.  We had an excellent IT Director who led the move.  My observations from his example taught me that with good planning and diligence a move can be quite smooth and a real feather in your cap!  Since then, I’ve lead two moves of my own; with responsibility for all that is IT, including end user PC/phones, the voice/data infrastructure as well as the data center.  I’d like to share a few key lessons I learned along the way.  Today, I’ll start with three… more will come in future posts.