In this post I'll admit that I come away with more questions than I do answers. One thing is certain and that is the disruptive technology is disrupting market share once again. It doesn't happen overnight and this time it will be very interesting. AT&T and Verizon have both posted favorable results in their wireless divisions, and each suffer turnover in customers, which they attribute to the slowing economy.
AT&T's hold on the iPhone crowd may soon be over as Verizon enters into talks with Apple about using an iPhone that will work with CDMA using CDMA 2000. Both companies have reported erosion in their landline business, and Verizon was hit with a drop of 34% in operating income and the WSJ also reports from an analyst, Craig Moffett, that, "Verizon's FIOS is doing a better job of replacing revenue than operating income."
Now along with erosion of landlines, other factors in the industry are stirring things up. SIP Trunks are reported to offer "feature-rich" services, but the reality is unless you buy into a hosted platform, chances are you won't get anything near "feature-rich." Wireline carriers will have to do more than cut operating costs, and you can bet that their diminutive revenue means a reaction somewhere ahead to replace lost income. Please keep in my mind as you read on that my SIP trunking experience is limited and so are many others'.
I think the finance guys will love the initial cost benefits, but the IT/ITC or telephony folks may end up bearing the burden of making sure all's well, even though management sees less red ink and perceives huge cost benefits.
My original mission was to find ways to exploit SIP trunks. I'll point out that calling on Verizon to inquire about SIP trunking got me nowhere fast. So in SIP trunking to begin with, there's an availability issue and even if they're available, it still depends upon your location and your available bandwidth and whether or not your gear is tested as interoperable with the provider.
Do you need an IP-PBX to get SIP trunks? No, but it sure does help. The gateways that SIP providers advertise may be purchased or leased, and this gear adds another layer of management.
A recent No Jitter post described a reader's experience using gateways and gaining significant cost benefits; I noted the enthusiasm. What would I do differently and why? For one, it's hard to say because each customer has different needs and at different times and stages in the business cycle. My needs or mostly wants were to leapfrog ahead of yanking the processor card from my hybrid IP-PBX and adding a new one to convert the hybrid to an IP-PBX. I just wanted the new IP box. My other needs are to discover first-hand so I can judge on some experience what my customers may think, say or do. Then, I wanted to find out about support. How do you support SIP trunks?
To save a couple of bucks is always good, but what would the call quality, call completion success rate and customer experience and service be like? The carrier sent me emails/letters that were more like auto responders, and when I did respond back with questions, concerns or suggestions I got no response at all. So their initial showing was good but lacking on substance, at least in the way of customer communications.
The first month I did my routine of nailing up calls between two systems for 30 minutes with music-on-hold. Next, I placed calls in and out, local and across the country to landlines, cell phones and other assorted places. After the second month I cancelled our Verizon freedom plan because I was convinced about acceptable call quality on the SIP Trunks.
What I really want from SIP trunking is the ability to have and use the same Telco features that I have and use today. The basic features I must have are 3-way calling and call transfer but was told, "Your PBX can do this." Sure, and tie up two CO lines or SIP trunks in the process, how inefficient! Don't offer me advanced features without first meeting my basic telephony needs because my customers don't really want to give up what already works as a sacrifice to get those "advanced features." Is SIP trunking feature rich? It depends upon the provider and your gear and the knowledge of the support on both sides, including that of the factory guys.
Initially, I've only encountered a couple of incomplete calls due to the SIP network. Audio has been very good and I'm not complaining about the cost. I gave some thought about network availability and all the stuff that folks like to talk about when addressing high availability, quality, five nines, etc. My IP-PBX has a cool feature that allows me to map a BLF (Busy lamp field) or illuminated phone button as an ALARM button. All major and minor alarms will illuminate the button and send the alarm codes too. I implemented this during the second month of service since there was no effective way to monitor whether or not the trunks were staying in service. We experienced 10 alarms from February 15 through March 24 before I called in a trouble report. ALL the alarms were showing loss of the SIP server connection. One alarm was that the Verizon FIOS and the attached Ethernet port rebooted and incurred a loss of network access for 10 minutes and 21 seconds. I traced this event from the IP-PBX back to the firewall to confirm it. The other 9 events never showed up in the firewall. Of those 9 events only one of them showed an authentication issue and immediately afterwards, the IP-PBX did authenticate and reconnected my two trunks.
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