Dear Customer, Please Pay Us LESS

I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but some of our customers are paying us too much money.

How? By renting ISDN30 circuits when they could switch to SIP Trunks and save themselves a packet.

God knows we've tried to tell them:

• We've published guides to SIP Trunking.
• We've mentioned the savings in our customer newsletter.
• We've even asked our crack team of salesmen to brief customers about SIP Trunking.

And STILL some customers seem to want to pay us too much money.

Now, I know you’re thinking: “That's not a problem! Why don't you just keep quiet and keep the money.”

Alas, most of the additional money goes straight to our ISDN suppliers. Much as we love our suppliers (well, it's more of a love-hate relationship), we don’t see why we should charge our customers more than necessary just to make our suppliers richer.

So who can save money by switching from ISDN to SIP Trunking?

Not all companies. If you have a few ISDN2 circuits, the savings are usually marginal. It’s only if you have ISDN30 circuits that the savings start adding up.

How does SIP Trunking save money?

In three ways:

• Cheaper connectivity: Bit-for-bit, leased lines offer better value than ISDN circuits
• Cheaper calls: SIP calls are usually cheaper than ones placed over ISDN circuits
• Cheaper Extendibility: With SIP, there's usually no need to buy line cards to slot into your PBX. Most modern PBXs support SIP out of the box. If you've got an old PBX, switch to SIP by using a SIP Gateway

Other Benefits of SIP Trunking

• SIP Trunking lets you add channels incrementally – Need to add a single phone line? No problem. Need to add 100? No problem. Unlike ISDN30 circuits, you don't need to add 8 to 30 channels at a time. As long as you have 80kbps of bandwidth spare, you can add another SIP Trunk.
• SIP Trunking increases peak capacity by pooling your voice and data connections - If lots of people are on the phone at the same time, your phone service can borrow bandwidth from your Internet connection. If few people are on the phone, your Internet connection can borrow the bandwidth that's not being used for making phone calls.
• SIP Trunking can make your phone system more resilient – Most companies have a single point of failure: their ISDN30 circuit. If that circuit goes down, they have no phone service. The same is true with SIP Trunking, if you just use one data circuit to connect to the phone network, you'll lose your phone service if that circuit goes down. Luckily, the substantial cost savings that come from switching to SIP can subsidise the cost of getting a backup connection. Then, if your primary data circuit were to go down, your calls could be re-routed over a backup data connection, or even over an ISDN circuit.
• SIP Trunking will work with your existing PBX - SIP Trunking offers a phased migration path. If you like the sound of SIP, but are wary of switching from trusted ISDN, there's a phased approach that might appeal to you. It allows you to get some of the cost savings of SIP, while being able to switch back to ISDN at a moment's notice. Here's how it works. Incoming calls continue to come in via ISDN. Outgoing calls are intercepted by a SIP-ISDN gateway, and travel out via SIP. Your existing ISDN circuit stays in place, and provides backup connectivity to your SIP trunks.

SIP is Cheaper, But Is The Call Quality Any Good?

That depends on whether you set it up right.

Phone calls are very sensitive to delay (latency), variations in delay (jitter), and information getting lost (packet loss).

If you try to run SIP Trunks over a consumer broadband connection you could end up sounding like Darth Vader landing a helicopter in a wind tunnel. We refuse to provide SIP Trunks over contended Internet connections. That's a world of pain and we stay well clear of it.

However, if SIP Trunking is setup right, you shouldn’t see any change in call quality. Just make sure that

1. phone calls are given priority over less time-sensitive traffic (web/email/intranet traffic etc)
2. there's no network congestion between your PBX and your SIP Trunk telephony provider's network.

We believe that any company with ISDN30 circuits should strongly consider making the switch to SIP.

To find out more, download our guide to business-class SIP Trunking from our  SIP Trunking page.