How to Get Perfect Call Quality on Your SIP Trunks – Part 2

As I discussed in Part 1 of this article, here is something I’m hearing a lot from IT Pros these days.

IT Pro: “Do you know of a good SIP provider? We’re planning on implementing an IP-PBX for my company with approx. 50 users and plan on running SIP instead of an ISDN PRI. We have a 100M dedicated fiber circuit for Internet so I think our bandwidth can handle it but I’m still a little concerned about call quality, so I’d love some feedback on SIP providers you’ve had good experiences with.”

Details on my first suggestion, (regarding installing an Integrated/Converged SIP Circuit), can be found in Part 1.

If, however, you are stuck in a contract with your current ISP and you also do not want to purchase a second dedicated circuit (for SIP and back-up Internet), here is a second option.

Me: Rather than running a 3rd party’s SIP trunks over your current ISP, have you considered using a SIP service provider that has a Network to Network Interface (NNI) agreement with your current ISP?

IT Pro: What’s that?

The Benefit:

Before I bore you with details, let me tell you the benefit of this service. Same as the benefit in Part 1’s solution, this technology gives you the SIP trunks you need BUT guarantees 100% perfect call quality at all times. Oh, I almost forgot… FOR THE SAME PRICE you’ll pay any other SIP provider.

The Breakdown:

What is an NNI?
A Network to Network Interface (NNI) is simply a private traffic peering agreement between two service providers. In this case, if your SIP provider has an NNI with your current ISP, they will pass your SIP calls directly to your ISP (in the back-office), rather than over the public Internet and vice versa.

How can they guarantee call quality?
Many of the SIP providers won’t completely guarantee voice quality, even if they have an NNI with your ISP (since they still can’t control the circuit), but it absolutely drastically increases your chances of getting perfect voice quality at all times.

By passing your voice packets privately through an NNI, they will not touch the public Internet and therefore, will have less hops, which means lower latency, packet loss and jitter.

This is different than SIP trunks over a 3rd party ISP without an NNI because in that scenario, your voice calls are being sent back to the SIP providers via the public Internet. Once your data packets hit the public Internet, you cannot control latency, packet loss or jitter, all of which will affect voice quality.

How is it the same price?
SIP Service Providers with NNI’s with large ISP’s do not charge more for SIP trunks than other SIP service providers. They do not have NNI’s with all ISP’s so they cannot charge more for this added benefit (since many of their customers will not have that benefit available).

Why didn’t my SIP trunking provider offer this?
Because most SIP trunking providers do not have NNI’s with ISP’s.

You have to dig a little to find providers that have an NNI with your current ISP. Or you can just contact us at AeroCom and we’ll tell you which SIP providers, if any, have an NNI with your current ISP.

What’s the catch of this service?
There is one obvious thing that can be a deal killer if you want this service:
1. If you’re ISP is small and therefore, does not have an NNI with any SIP trunking providers.

There you go! A second way to get better call quality with SIP!

But that’s not all!

There is another way you can improve your SIP or Hosted VoIP voice quality. Have your SIP or VoIP provider install SD-WAN at your site.

SD-WAN can be installed at your location, even if you only have one site. It will allow you to install a second Internet connection (i.e. 4G, business class cable, etc.), and use both Internet connections simultaneously. This will do 3 things to improve your voice quality:

1. Your voice will be sent over the Internet connection that has the least congestion. SD-WAN will do this on-the-fly.
2. Your non-priority traffic will be dynamically throttled down, to make room for high-priority voice traffic.
3. If one Internet connection goes down, the other will take all of the traffic, automatically.

And there you are! Don’t be shy… feel free to contact us with any questions!

Which 3 VoIP service providers are the best fit for your company’s size, location and requirements? Click below.

MY TOP 3

About the Author
Mike Smith is the Founder and President of AeroCom and has been helping companies with telecom and cloud services since 1999. He has been the recipient of numerous business telecommunications industry awards and in 2011, he was honored as one of the top 40 business people in Orange County, CA., under 40 years old. Follow Mike on LinkedIn, Twitter or SpiceWorks.