FreePBX SIP Trunk – What Are the Benefits?

VoIP has been around for a while now. It has come a long way from its humble beginnings in 1992. For the first few years, it was nothing more than a hobbyist platform for interested people to play with. Today the industry is worth billions of dollars and the future is looking bright. It is all set to replace the PSTN in the near future as well.

SIP Trunks

Any organization opting for VoIP has a major decision to make at the outset. Do you wish to go for hosted VoIP services or buy SIP trunks and deploy your own system? Generally speaking, smaller companies prefer hosted services as it is maintenance-free. Larger corporations opt to manage SIP-based on-premise deployments as they retain control over the system.

However, as vendors improve their service portfolio, large companies may switch to hosted VoIP. In a similar vein, medium businesses are also discovering the cost benefits of managing their own system over the long-term. Regardless of your business sites, you can opt for SIP trunks provided you can put in the time and resources.

But before you select any SIP trunk vendor, you should check for compatibility. Just because the service uses the Session Initiation Protocol doesn’t mean you’re not locked in. Some providers modify their system making it difficult to switch to a different system. Others will give steeply discounted rates for contracts and take away your options.

Benefits of SIP Compatibility

Choose a provider who is committed to maintaining open standards and supporting the SIP protocol. Why does it matter to you as a client? For one thing, it means you can be assured of functionality. You can use any combination of software and hardware to deploy your system, as long as it is compatible with SIP. You don’t have to modify or develop custom software to make things work.

Another benefit is that it keeps your options open. What if you find a vendor who offers better rates in the future? Or your vendor is slow to offer the latest features and you want to leave? You can switch out your SIP trunk provider without wasting all the effort and resources you have already invested. You don’t have to change your existing set up at all.

What is FreePBX?

When you opt for SIP trunking, you retain control over set up and configuration. You decide what equipment you need and the kind of software for your PBX. There are many open source and free options as well as proprietary solutions to fit your needs.

One such alternative is FreePBX. First developed in 2004, it is a robust platform used in millions of phone systems around the world. In fact, it is probably the most popular open source PBX platform. In the beginning, it was called the Asterisk Management Portal (AMP). It was a graphical user interface (GUI) to manage the Asterisk Telephony Engine. It has come a long way since then.

Today, FreePBX is a communication platform and complete ecosystem by itself. It provides a stable platform for businesses to build their own enterprise phone systems.

FreePBX SIP Trunk Benefits

Why select FreePBX over all the other options in the market? After all, there are so many choices out there! There are several reasons. Perhaps the biggest is the fact that it provides an easy way to manage the Asterisk PBX system. Setting up a premise-based PBX solution is easier than before. But it is still not as easy as accessing a hosted service through a web dashboard. FreePBX brings the difficulty level down by quite a few notches.

FreePBX is very popular and has been around for a long time. Hundreds of professionals have dedicated their time to contribute code for the open source platform. This means that you have access to a wide range of resources and helpful information. Any question you have about set up, deployment, maintenance, and management will have been answered already.

What if you run into a problem you cannot solve on your own? Here is where the ecosystem of sellers, resellers, and consultants comes in. You can hire experts to troubleshoot your system, work out the kinks, and even maintain the system for you.

Being an open source project has another significant advantage for FreePBX. And that is security. Remember that your SIP trunk connects your organization to the public Internet. It means you cannot be too careful when it comes to securing your data, users, and business. An open source platform based on SIP means you have access to the underlying code and the expertise of thousands around the globe. You can customize a solution to fit your security requirements.

Opting for SIP trunks gives you many options. Using FreePBX – built on the Asterisk platform – is a great choice for businesses of any size!