With BT stating their intention to retire ISDN lines, what should you be looking for to keep the phones ringing in your school or business?
A SIP trunk is a connection between your telephone system and a service provider which goes via your internet connection. SIP trunks are becoming a popular choice for organisations for a number of reasons:
- Save money on telephone costs with lower line rental and call costs in many cases;
- Flexibility to increase and decrease the number of trunks (lines) coming into the organisation;
- Often much shorter term contracts than the two or three year deals which are common with ISDN;
- No physical install to pay / wait for;
- Portability in the event of an office move – provided there is an internet connection, your phone numbers will follow you.
How do I move to SIP?
Planning a move to SIP involves a number of stages:
- Making sure the internet connection has sufficient bandwidth – we suggest 100Kbps is allocated per trunk / line. In some cases quality of service may need to be put into place to ensure that call quality is maintained;
- Selecting the right SIP trunk provider for you, there are a number out there and unlike ISDN right now there is a dominant player such as BT;
- Porting over numbers from current ISDN lines and making sure that the phone system is correctly set-up.
It’s not a process you’ll want to undergo alone, so speak with an expert. Westcom don’t provide SIP trunks directly but can recommend a suitable provider and help with the move in a way to make it a seamless as possible.
Do I need to upgrade my phone system?
Probably not. It is true that in many cases, older phone systems may not support SIP. But fear not! Westcom can provide hardware which sits between a telephone system and the internet connection and turns the incoming SIP trunk back into ISDN – something the telephone system can understand.
Such a conversion is cost effective and extends the useful life of an existing, supported telephone system whilst allowing you to take advantage of SIP trunking today.
