5 Reasons SIP Trunking is Alive and Well5 Reasons SIP Trunking is Alive and Well

Cost – Organizations, especially large multi-nationals, are likely to find that PSTN access services that they purchase on their own, or through a managed services provider, offer superior economics. Most large organizations (greater than 2,500 employees) use self-managed SIP trunking services, either from a single provider or from a variety of best-in-region providers, coupled with policy-based routing to minimize toll charges. For a small company operating solely within the U.S., bundled PSTN minutes with a UCaaS service makes financial sense; for large multi-nationals, the economics often point to self-management as delivering superior TCO

Control – Using a UCaaS or CCaaS provider’s PSTN access services means transferring your phone numbers to their domain. Again, this approach might attract small companies, but for large ones, with tens of thousands of phone numbers, the complexity of transferring phone numbers and avoiding disruption/downtime may make it more advantageous to maintain phone number control.

Flexibility – Moving phone numbers to a UCaaS or CCaaS provider not only means loss of control of those numbers, but it also means that customers are locked into those service providers. After going through the pain of transferring numbers to a cloud provider, it may be exceedingly difficult to transfer those numbers to a different provider. Alternatively, maintaining one’s own SIP trunks and control of PSTN numbers means that not only can organizations easily move from one cloud provider to another, but that they also have the flexibility to utilize multiple cloud providers. For example, a large organization might leverage Microsoft Teams or Cisco Webex Calling for its business phone services and want to use a different provider for its contact center. Or, they may want to pilot services from a few different cloud providers before making a final purchase decision. Bring-your-own-SIP models provide for the flexibility to avoid single-vendor lock-in.

Contracts – Larger organizations may have long-term contracts with SIP trunking providers that don’t allow for easy breakage. Again, it may be more costly to get out of existing three-or-more year SIP service contracts to migrate PSTN access to the cloud provider.

Features – Many SIP trunking providers offer additional features not available from UCaaS providers. These may include APIs for phone number provisioning, global emergency services (911, 112) call routing, SMS/MMS in-bound and out-bound services, virtual phone numbers to establish local presence in remote markets, and more.