If you own or operate a business with over 20 employees and have multiple offices, you know how challenging it can be to ensure your communications system offers maximum flexibility, reliability and cost-effectiveness. You may be familiar with, or already have, a PRI or VoIP (Voice over IP) system, but did you know SIP trunking may be your best option to consolidate your lines, save money, and provide seamless communication between your employees and customers across Canada and even the world?
SIP trunking is an excellent option that expands upon and goes beyond traditional VoIP: it’s the cornerstone of Sunco SIP for Business, our latest telecom solution!
What is SIP and SIP trunking?
Short for Session Initiation Protocol, SIP is a standardized language that “lives” within VoIP. It enables devices like desk phones or cellphones to communicate over a data network instead of traditional analog lines.
A SIP trunk is a “virtual” phone line that carries voice data over the Internet or a private network. Consider a SIP trunk a conversation path that can carry unlimited phone numbers. For example: Company XYZ has five SIP trunks and 30 phone numbers or direct lines. This means five incoming or outgoing conversations can occur simultaneously at one time from any combination of those 30 numbers.
Flexible, efficient, and significantly cheaper than traditional lines, SIP trunking goes beyond what analog phone lines and digital phone lines offer. Most modern telephone systems, even analog ones, can use SIP trunking. It’s interesting to note that some business owners reject the idea of using SIP trunks and want to stick to “tried and true” analog lines. In reality though, SIP is being used most of the time – even with analog lines. Telco providers use SIP to convert all analog signals to data for ease and speed of transmission before converting the signals back to analog and delivering it to the business. Business communication is going digital and it’s almost impossible to make any phone call without your device communicating with the language of SIP!
Manage your voice traffic with ease
Did you know that phone numbers on SIP trunks are less expensive? Additionally, we can combine phone lines from multiple area codes into one SIP trunk group. Sunco recently helped a nationwide customer with offices in several provinces. They had multiple phone lines from different providers in each office – an administrative and fiscal headache. By centralizing all the phone lines to SIP trunking in the head office, the business reduced their monthly bill by 50% and have a comprehensive failover plan in case of downed network lines or hardware issues.
If your business operates an office in a rural area, you know how expensive traditional telephone lines can be. SIP trunking is ideally suited to this scenario and can potentially save you 60% or more on your phone bills. Regardless of location, all Sunco SIP trunks are charged at one flat rate.
New SIP phone numbers typically take hours or minutes to set up, instead of weeks or months. That means your organization can get to work sooner, losing less potential income from downtime.
Long distance included
Depending on your plan, Sunco SIP trunks include unlimited long distance to anywhere in North America (except Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon). For organizations with widespread locations, this means significant cost savings and more productive communications without the worry of racking up hefty long distance bills.
Create a “virtual” presence for your clients
Sunco SIP trunks offer exceptional phone number portability. Numbers can originate from other cities or towns, regardless of your actual physical location. For example, if you’re headquartered in Edmonton, but need to regularly communicate with clients and partners in Calgary or Winnipeg, setting up a Calgary or Winnipeg number in your SIP system, complete with a local area code, is a relatively quick and easy task!
SIP trunking is compatible with most modern phone systems, and with both real and virtual locations, you can have physical office staff and remote access employees all on the same lines. With its ease in setting up new lines combined with built-in failover to route calls to other locations in a crisis, SIP trunks are a perfect choice for remote offices.
Disaster recovery planning
Problems arise and mistakes happen; it’s inevitable. Your business needs a way to stay productive when things go wrong, and SIP excels at exactly that. Sunco’s SIP trunk solutions can be designed with built-in failover, so if one of your office’s data circuits goes down, calls are sent to a backup circuit, or to another location, even if that location is nowhere near the first (another city, country, etc.). Our SIP service can also failover to traditional telephony, like cell phones and analog.
“Sunco SIP trunk solutions can have built-in failover, so if one of your office’s data circuits goes down, calls are sent to a backup circuit, or to another location, even if that location is nowhere near the first.” – Cedrick LeBlanc, Director of Sales at Sunco
Sunco SIP for Business
We can help determine if SIP trunking is right for your business! Sunco looks at all factors, including your needs, telecom traffic, the quality of your broadband, and if your technology supports SIP.
Don’t have a Sunco phone system? No problem! Sunco SIP trunks work on most modern phone systems. Of course, if an upgrade is required, our friendly team is more than happy to advise you on a new system.
Contact us today to determine if SIP trunking is the right choice for your organization, and see just how much Sunco SIP for Business can do for you.