SIP Trunking - A Replacement for Costly Local Trunks
The consolidation of voice services - whether this means leveraging a VoIP solution or a full deployment to Unified Communications (UC) - is where enterprise communications is headed. Organizations are looking to merge voice, video, and data to enable business applications and deliver savings to the bottom line. IP convergence is only the beginning, as organizations realize UC can also deliver increased employee productivity and an improved customer satisfaction. And it can do all of this while reducing the total cost of ownership for business communications.
For enterprises today, there is one pathway to UC that stands out as a way to efficiently enable the migration and significantly reduce costs.
The pathway is Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Trunking, which replaces the traditional physical cables that connect enterprises to the service provider network with virtual trunks carried over data connections. Sprint SIP Trunking is a nationwide, network-based, converged IP service using Sprint's secure Global MPLS service to deliver all communications over a single access circuit. This service simultaneously converges local and long- distance voice, data, and video onto a single network.
The advantages of SIP Trunking are in its flexibility. Sprint SIP trunking allows companies to share capacity over one IP network for multiple locations and applications. The number of local circuits an enterprise needs to buy from local telephone companies can be slashed by eliminating Local Access Trunks at the IP-PBX locations and Local Business Lines at the branch locations.
A SIP Trunk can carry all forms of communication, making it the ideal foundation for UC. It extends convergence beyond the enterprise LAN without the need for costly gateways or bridges, since all connectivity is handled inside the Sprint network.
The entire range of UC services - multimedia conferencing, presence, application sharing, chat services, enterprise mobility, and more - can be efficiently delivered over SIP Trunks. It is the enabling technology to a more cost-effective and productive business culture that revolves around the ability to keep employees connected and increasing productivity while driving down costs.
As Yankee Group observed in a recent report, "Once network managers fully understand what SIP Trunking is and the value it provides, deciding to connect using this method will be one of the easiest decisions involved in the deployment."
In the same report, the Yankee Group noted several key attributes an enterprise should look for in a service provider to select for the migration to UC via SIP Trunking. Among them are effective connection of SIP Trunks to the MPLS network, ownership of both a wired and wireless network, crucial partnerships with the premises equipment manufacturers, and a robust set of managed and professional services.
Sprint delivers all of those, making Sprint an ideal partner for the journey to UC.
SIP Trunking in Action.
- A retailer with thousands of outlets, looking to streamline incoming calls and reduce costs to its largest full-line retail sites, turned to Sprint for a solution that provides local access, voice, and data over a single IP connection. The solution allowed the retailer to slash its long-distance costs by 50 percent
- A nationwide bank, which had used 300 local business lines spread across several telephone companies, sought a better solution-one that avoided long-distance charges, any need for call forwarding, and additional data connections for each location. The Sprint solution eliminated the need for local voice lines, enabling the bank to cut its total number of trunks in half, carrying all voice, data, and IP-based services across just 150 SIP Trunks.
