Archive for September 11th, 2012

There is a relatively new technology that can be used to bring phone calls into a business phone system that gives lower monthly bills and a higher level of reliability. It is named a Cisco SIP trunk, and it is worth evaluating ways it can help your business. The one thing you need to know is that your business has to be using a VoIP phone system in order to take advantage of all the benefits, however, in some cases the monthly cost savings from converting to a Cisco SIP trunk with a Cisco VoIP phone system can fund the upgrade to a Voice over IP telephone system!

Most organizations that have more than fifty phone users have a kind of business phone system called a Private Branch eXchange, or PBX. This system allows users to call each other quickly, and to share the circuits that are provided by the phone company for outside calls. The circuit that connects the organization to the phone company is most often a type of voice T1 called an ISDN PRI, which can have 23 concurrent calls on it, and costs typically $600/month. A T1 can also be used for other reasons, including providing data connections in the form of Internet or a private Wide Area Network such as MPLS. Because all business locations require voice service as well as data service, most typically have multiple T1 connections coming into each of their sites. A Cisco phone system can work with regular voice T1′s as well as a SIP trunk, making the conversion very straightforward.

One of the notable advantages of SIP trunking is cost savings. For example, an organization that has 10 locations, each with a voice T1 and an Internet data T1, can reduce their costs enormously. An Internet T1 is about $600/month, whereas an MPLS T1 costs less at about $450/month. It is possible to reduce a $12,000/month voice and data circuit cost to about $7000/month by putting in place SIP trunking and an MPLS wide area network in place of voice T1′s and Internet T1′s. This leaves $5000 extra per month that can be used to fund the purchase of equipment and installation services for a VoIP phone system. If the phone system is financed over a 3 year period, that provides a budget of about $180,000 for a new telephone system.

There are additional cost savings from circuit consolidation. SIP trunking can be used to consolidate unused circuit channels from the telephone company. With traditional voice T1 circuits, If a location requires that more than 23 concurrent calls be completed, a second T1 has to be added, bringing the total circuit capacity to 46 concurrent calls. The higher capacity is only available for that site. It is very different with SIP trunking. In most situations the SIP trunk is priced for aggregate concurrent calls for the whole organization, which means utilization is higher and monthly costs lower.

An additional advantage of SIP trunking is reliability. The SIP trunk phone calls are sent over a data network to a voice gateway that can terminate the SIP call. It is over an IP connection. If the first gateway the call is directed to is not available, then a second and possibly third location can receive the call. That means if a remote office location is not available due to power outage or natural disaster, the calls can still be sent to a person on the telephone system who is reachable. This allows the business to continue to provide customer service to the caller and not merely give a busy signal, which is what the caller would receive if the call was sent to a voice T1 connected to a PBX that was turned off.

Just like any newer technology, there are many details that have to be taken care of in a SIP trunk deployment. When a SIP trunk upgrade is combined with a telephone system replacement, there are more details and possible issues. For most organizations, the cost savings, improved availability and enhanced productivity from a new telephone system make it a worthwhile conversion. SIP trunking combined with a Voice over IP phone system is something that should be on every business’s future plans.

Here is a brief video explaining the benefits of a Cisco SIP trunk, and this is a link to an article about planning your Cisco phone system upgrade.