3 Things you Didn’t Know About SIP Trunks

SIP trunks are quickly getting the media’s attention in the world of enterprise grade communication systems. While hosted VoIP works well for a number of organizations, it’s not a one size fits all solution either. Many businesses are finding out that SIP trunks may suit them better after all. Some of them try out hosted VoIP first and then switch to SIP trunking while others opt for it from the beginning.

SIP trunks offer flexibility, allow you to scale up or down as business requirements dictate and let you pay for exactly those resources you consume. Why should you purchase 2 PRI lines with 23 channels each when you only need 26? Why keep paying for numbers you no longer use? SIP trunks eliminate such inefficiencies.  They can save your business time, money and effort in maintaining the voice system on a daily basis.

Sure SIP trunks had some downsides. They took a bit more effort than simply signing up for a hosted VoIP plan. Provisioning a SIP trunk wasn’t exactly as straightforward as it could be. You had to make several decisions like centralized vs decentralized deployments, whether to buy new hardware or use adapters etc. But SIP trunking vendors have eliminated many such obstacles. Nowadays deploying SIP trunks in your company doesn’t have to be a complicated endeavor. You can be up and running within a few days with your brand new SIP trunks.

Still not many people are experts on SIP trunking within an enterprise. More users know about hosted VoIP than about SIP trunks. So here are 3 things you didn’t know about SIP trunks before.

SIP Trunks Offer Quick Return on Investment

Most people know that SIP trunks can reduce your monthly phone bills. Calls between employees are usually free. It doesn’t matter if they’re sitting at home in Georgia, working on a client site in Europe or deployed at headquarters in London. International calls are much cheaper which contributes greatly to the decrease in billing amounts.

However deploying ISP trunks may cost you some initial investment. You may have upgraded some equipment, purchased new VoIP phones or even a brand new SIP compatible PBX system. Quite a few businesses also find that they need faster internet connections to handle the extra voice traffic on the network.

So what you need to know is the return on investment for your new SIP trunks and how quickly you can get a positive ROI. Do the costs and benefits even out over the long term? How long do you have to wait before your initial investment pays off? Now these numbers will differ on a case by case basis depending on individual circumstances. But most businesses see a positive ROI in a few months or a couple of years at most. Now that’s something you don’t normally read about!

SIP Trunks Reduce Complexity

Switching to SIP trunks will simplify many processes within your company. For one thing, you get fewer bills per month for your phones. Rather than dealing with multiple vendors (each with their own billing cycles and procedures) you get one consolidated bill from a single provider. It saves paperwork, time and effort for your accounting teams.

You also consolidate many different communication channels into a single line. For instance, you no longer need a separate video conferencing solution since SIP trunks can handle video along with voice calls. Employees with video enabled phones can have one on one to group video calls instead of lengthy (not to mention expensive) meetings in person. With SIP trunks, you can easily share your screen, video chat or switch back to audio calls within a single session. You can even have a group meeting where few users join by voice while the rest can access the video feed.

SIP Trunks Are Compatible with Legacy PBX Systems

This is not actually widely known, even by those who are familiar with VoIP technology. You don’t have to buy a brand new SIP compatible PBX box just to use your SIP trunks. All you need is an Integrated Access Device (IAD). This is installed alongside your legacy PBX system and it acts as an interface with the SIP trunks. Many companies simply prefer to start with new hardware/software but it doesn’t mean you have to do the same.

In fact you don’t even need dedicated VoIP phones either. If you have perfectly good phones that still have a few years left, just use adapters to connect them to the network. You don’t a deskphone for each user either. Since you can answer or make calls from mobile devices or even desktops, you’ll need far fewer phones than before.

As you can see SIP trunks have a few tricks up their sleeve. Use their distinct features to your advantage and watch your business benefit from a host of capabilities!