Being a business owner, you consistently look for the best SIP trunk provider to reduce costs and reprioritize the overall spending. Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is the method that helps you achieve a VoIP call. SIP works as an application layer protocol. It initiates sessions of video or/and audio amongst two endpoints. As a whole, SIP helps in creating, modifying, and terminating sessions between one or more associates. Likewise, a SIP trunk is an analog phone’s virtual counterpart. Hence, it helps in making national, long-distance, and international calls over the internet.
There are many SIP trunk providers in the market, like Xinix. SIP trunking allows companies to link the in-house IP PBX systems to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). However, it is better to consider the level of scalability while choosing a provider for your business. It ensures whether you can remove or add SIP trunks based on the growing requirements of the corporation. It is also essential to check the failover system and what it allows during network or power outages at your location. In addition, there are various other factors to consider while selecting a SIP trunk provider, as described below.
Direct Inward Dialing (DID) Numbers
The SIP trunks usually assign various DID numbers, which forwards the inbound calls to particular SIP phones. The majority of the managed providers also assist port current DID numbers over to the latest telephony infrastructure. As a result, the employees remain unaffected by the switch.
Although you might port your current numbers and these numbers cannot be ported in some situations. For instance, the lack of a correlated agreement amongst the service or carriers cancels out, or the provider assigns the particular number to another customer. In such situations, you need to buy new DID numbers. However, SIP trunks do not need to install tangible lines, so DID numbers are more convenient and cheaper to buy.
Security & Privacy
While choosing a SIP trunk provider, it is vital to validate that the respective provider follows the best practices of privacy and security. For instance, using a session border controller (SBC) can enhance security through traffic analysis. It only allows the incoming traffic from a device excluded within an access control list.
Apart from security, various businesses function in industries that have stringent regulations for privacy. Such corporations also ensure the accessibility of their communications that is only available and reachable by authorized users. Consider a managed provider, like Xinix, that encrypts the SIP traffic through secure real-time Protocol (SRTP) to meet your privacy standards.
Call Volume
A SIP trunk consists of a set of channels. In addition, every channel can handle one inbound and one outbound call at the same time. Therefore, it is crucial to fathom the number of simultaneous calls needed by your infrastructure to support. As a result, it helps select the most suited number of channels to fulfill your business needs.
A majority of managed providers help estimate the requirements of call capacity during the process of implementation. So it is effortless to scale the number of channels up with cloud SIP trunks. It is not as easy to scale the channels’ number with on=premises PRI solutions. As a result, SIP trunk Provider is a much more flexible telephony solution.
You can only modernize your telephony infrastructure by using software-based solutions for the communications infrastructure. It leads to significant cost savings and reliability. Hence, consider the above-discussed factors while choosing the right SIP trunk provider for your business.
