How to Get Perfect Call Quality on Your SIP Trunks – Part 1

March 23, 2015 Aerocom

Two girlfriends and a telephone pop art retro vector. Retro smartphones and communicationHere is something I’m hearing a lot from IT Professionals, these days.

IT Pro: “Who’s the best SIP VoIP provider? We are planning to buy a new IP-PBX for my company with approx. 50 users and we are leaning toward using SIP trunks (via our Internet connection), instead of an ISDN PRI, for our phone lines. 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. I’d love some feedback on SIP providers that you’ve had good experiences with.”

Me: “Rather than running a 3rd party’s SIP trunks over your current ISP, have you considered a converged/integrated SIP circuit?

IT Pro: “What’s that?”

The Benefit:

Before I bore you with details, let me tell you the benefit of this service. 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 for your separate SIP trunks and a 3rd party Internet connection. Oh, and this is true whether we’re talking about SIP or Hosted VoIP.

The Breakdown:

What is a Converged/Integrated SIP and Internet Circuit?
The provider will deliver a circuit (i.e. Fiber, Ethernet over Copper, DS3, T1, etc.), and they will terminate it into an Integrated Access Device (IAD), which will sit in your phone room. From the IAD, the service provider will give you one Ethernet hand-off for SIP voice service and another Ethernet hand-off for your Internet access.

If nobody is on a call, you get the entire circuit for Internet. If someone picks up the phone, the call takes priority and reduces your Internet speed by 32k-100k, depending on the voice codec the provider uses for your SIP trunking service.

How can they guarantee call quality?
That IAD device is a router that is running a private IP-VPN WAN technology called Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS), between your location and the providers’ central office switch. Your voice packets are prioritized over your Internet traffic and since it’s a private circuit back to the provider, your voice is protected the entire way.

This is different than SIP trunks over a 3rd party ISP 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.

In addition, if you run your SIP trunks over a 3rd party ISP, the SIP provider cannot guarantee uptime because (of course), it’s not their circuit and they have no control if your circuit is taking errors or goes down.

How is it the same price?
It’s actually not. It’s often LOWER priced. Either way, it makes sense that it’s the same price. You are paying for the same two services: 1) A large, dedicated Internet access circuit; and 2) SIP Trunks.

How is it sometimes lower? Because when you’re spending more money with a vendor, you get more discounts.

Why didn’t my SIP trunking provider offer this?
Because most SIP trunking providers do not have the ability to sell circuits and therefore, the only method they can deliver their SIP service is through the public Internet.

You have to dig a little to find providers that offer Integrated SIP service. Or you can just contact us at AeroCom and we’ll run a quick search for your address and tell you all of the Integrated SIP providers available.

What’s the catch of this service?
There are two things that can be a deal killer if you want this service:

  1. If you are stuck in a long-term agreement with your current ISP. If that’s the case, you can check out Part 2 of this article OR you can order a smaller circuit that has just enough room for your voice and have it double as your back-up Internet. Want to know a secret… this is actually the way most providers are delivering ISDN PRI T1’s these days… yep, it’s really a dedicated SIP circuit with an IAD on the end of it, that is converting the signal to PRI.
  2. In order for a service provider to deliver SIP Trunks to you via an Integrated access circuit, you must use an approved IP PBX. Each provider has a list of approved PBX’s that they’ve tested and can guarantee will work perfectly on their service.

There you go! SIP without the concern of poor call quality or down time!

But WAIT! There is one other way you can do this. Read Part 2 of this article to learn the other technology you can use to get better call quality for your SIP voice trunks.

Have an AeroCom rep help you shop hundreds of SIP providers to find your company’s top 3. Click below.

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Click here to see which business SIP providers have the highest customer ratings.

 

About the Authormikesmith
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 LinkedInTwitter or SpiceWorks.

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