April 24, 2012

 

Many businesses, especially those looking for ways to reduce their telephony expenses for multiple office sites, have heard about wholesale VoIP offerings like SIP trunking and wondered if they would be effective.

Virtutone, a provider of wholesale VoIP services, recommends businesses consider SIP trunking if they can answer yes to any of these questions:

• Do you have an IP-ready PBX (News - Alert)?
• Are you thinking about purchasing a new PBX?
• Do you have multiple office sites?
• Do you experience highly variable call volume?
• Do you ever experience issues with busy signals or insufficient lines?
• Are you seeking enterprise-level reliability and scalability?

Session Initiation Protocol (News - Alert) (SIP) trunking, Virtutone explains on its website, creates virtual phone lines between PBXs and the PSTN, linking together office locations. It’s the key to unlocking the powerful potential of next-generation, IP-based communications because it allows businesses to replace their costly traditional lines and ISDN PRIs with a much simpler, less expensive architecture capable of handling any call volume.

Advantages of SIP Trunking

SIP trunking, Virtutone says, has two distinct advantages over traditional telephony architectures.

1. Capacity on Demand

“Most businesses that rely on traditional phone solutions pay for up to 50 percent more lines than they need—just to be safe,” Virtutone notes on its website. 

With Virtutone’s SIP trunking, companies can manage the same call capacity with fewer lines (or “channels”) and only subscriber to the lines they really need. A feature called Channel Bursting ensures that capacity needed is always available on demand. Channels can be added or removed within 24-48 hours as needed—about 10 times the speed it would take to make changes in a traditional PRI-based system.

2. Aggregated Channels and In-Network Calling

“SIP trunking not only allows you to benefit from an extended in-network calling area, but also pools available capacity across multiple locations,” points out Virtutone on its website.

This means capacity can be dynamically allocated, based on demand, to any site. This is unlike traditional PRIs, which have fixed site-specific capacities. With SIP trunking, it’s easy to have any one site act as a failover to ensure business continuity.

Because of its national network footprint, Virtutone can help its clients eliminate long-distance charges by selecting phone numbers from more than 8,500 local U.S. exchanges and 1,100 Canadian cities, assigning each location to a single SIP trunk.

Focus on Quality: Origination Services

Virtutone also provides wholesale VoIP origination services, available from 60 countries (more are added each week).

Quality is the main focus of Virtutone’s origination services.

“We are vigilant about the service partners and vendors we choose to team with,” the company notes on its website. “We refuse to carry traffic on grey routes as they are no bargain.”

No Shortcuts: Termination Services

Phone (News - Alert) companies, VoIP and cellular carriers, satellite and cable TV service providers, call centers, and managed IT service providers also rely on Virtutone’s termination services, which are designed and maintained to deliver quality voice and customer service at competitive rates. This isn’t easy, but Virtutone knows commitment to quality and price pays dividends in the long term.

“Delivering high quality services over an extended period of time is a challenge,” the company acknowledges on its website. “There are no shortcuts to quality .We pride ourselves on delivering the same high quality, month after month, year after year.”

Edited by Juliana Kenny