SIP Trunks: Rescue the CustomerSIP Trunks: Rescue the Customer

The ability to deploy and transition over to SIP trunks is incredibly easier and faster than re-wiring with new underground cabling.

In an ongoing construction project, a customer realizes that their old infrastructure is failing with each rainfall and now melting snow. New infrastructure is in place but connectivity to the outside world is hampered.

With the Outside Plant (OSP) failing, the interconnecting internal cables are damaged, partially cut and failing fast because of rain and now snow melt. The Telco states they will install a feed from the pole to the new demarcation. New copper won't resolve the issues because the internal interconnecting cables are also damaged in several places.

To make things worse, the 20+ year-old-PBX has damaged ports with no remaining ports available; it's been costly to service and maintain and the monthly Telco costs are about $900 when they should be around $250-$300 with SIP trunks.

After discussions with the site engineer and IT company, we decided to install an IP-PBX in the server rack supplemented with its own UPS. After submitting a request to Broadvox for test trunks, we converted existing 66-block Cat5E terminations to modular jacks (568-B) in a patch panel. Next we installed IP telephones replacing existing dead phones.

We set up campus-wide VLANs while the IT contractor established new policies and routing within the firewall. With the "test" SIP trunks tested and validated we issued a request for permanent service and started porting over most affected numbers--DIDs where the phones were completely dead or not functional for conversation. The fax lines are all being ported over to a hosted fax service, and outbound faxing will route through the IP-PBX 2500 ports. All alarm and monitoring POTS lines are being converted to Verizon's cellular gateway service.

The remaining copper pairs that do work currently will be abandoned, and a new and smaller copper cable will provide pairs for new services, but only two pairs will be used for POTS, to act as a failover for the SIP trunks. Remaining telephone sets and DID numbers will be ported by severity and need.

Once FIOS is installed, Internet services including SIP trunks will route via FIOS primarily, and backup will become Comcast. In the foreseeable future, POTS may be non-existent and Cellular gateways are more likely to become backup and even primary dial tone for services.

The ability to deploy and transition over to SIP trunks is incredibly easier and faster than re-wiring with new underground cabling. The expense of running these cables was avoided, and the ability to recover required substantially less time. Establishing SIP trunks with a new DID number first also proved easier and faster by buying us time to port numbers afterwards. Copper pairs connecting to Verizon services are now minimized by use of SIP and cellular service. Once FIOS is installed, the backup dial tone will be rerouted to FIOS and the copper will become silent.

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