Last week, I introduced SIP and wrote about the use cases around adjunct connectivity and routing. This week, I'll share use cases around SIP trunks and endpoints. Let's get to it!
SIP Trunks
After adjunct connectivity and routing, SIP trunks were the next thing to achieve mainstream adoption. In the beginning, people were converting their TDM trunk (T1s) to SIP, again, because they didn’t have a choice. Carriers are all moving (or have already moved) in that direction. Most customers who still have T1s are plugged into an on-site gateway that converts it to the carrier’s SIP network. SIP is so much easier for the carrier. But most customers converted to SIP as a one-to-one kind of thing. You have 96 channels of T1-connected trunks, so they’d convert to 96 channels of SIP. But the migration of SIP trunks really opens the doors to some new ways of thinking about things.
First, it’s important to know that the vast majority of users calling into a business are calling from a mobile phone. I’ve heard the number is as high as 80%. Why is that important? Mobile carriers use voice over LTE (VoLTE) to connect mobile endpoints together. And all the big ones are using high-definition, wideband audio (think G.722 and Opus). We’re just now starting to see carriers offer SIP trunks to the enterprise, supporting that same HD audio! PSTN-based, “toll-quality voice” is no longer the gold standard. Voice T1s can’t deliver HD audio. It’s just not possible. But you can with SIP trunks (it’s the same hardware we use to route HD audio to our appropriately configured conference bridges and IVRs).
Those same mobile carriers also know more about the “sessions” than a regular PSTN provider would – because they have to. SIP sessions are aren’t hardwired. They’re virtual. So, they need more identifiable information in the SIP headers to identify the sessions and the endpoints that make up those sessions. We used to think caller name and number were cool. Mobile carriers generally know a lot more things, such as a verified version of the name/number, as well as account owner, address, and more. We’re beginning to see the SIP mobile carriers offer that information to the receiving side (think contact centers). Some do it in the call signaling. Some offer it up as a web-based, REST API call. Think about the value of that kind of information coming directly into a contact center.
Endpoints
Again, the boring way to think about this is to take your 9611 H.323 hard phones and convert them to SIP firmware. It’s still a boring hard phone. The first step towards coolness is to enable mobility. SIP has significantly more seamless mobile security. H.323 doesn’t have native encryption. So, you generally run a VPN layer to handle the needed security. But VPNs are not nearly as secure as people think they are. VPNs take two unencrypted endpoints, and encrypts the data as it leaves the device. So, it lives unencrypted on the devices. With SIP, we get to take advantage of native http-based TLS support. This encryption is done at the app level. Its data is born encrypted. Finally, you no longer have to launch a VPN to be functional. Is the app running? It’s functional. It’s secure, inside and outside of the network. No more thinking about what your settings need to be to communicate. It just works.
With SIP, you also get things like MDA (multi-device access), allowing a single user to be logged into multiple devices at the same time (their office phone, their home office phone, their iPhone, their Android tablet, etc.). True mobility requires this flexibility, but it is extremely difficult (if not impossible) to do with legacy TDM and H.323 endpoints. The other significant aspect of SIP-based endpoints comes when you think about new endpoints. Software-based. Tablet-based. Instead of being limited to a typical user interface that was created 40 years ago, in software we can change the look and feel of the display. New tablet based phones can be 100% customizable, with the SDKs that some vendors provide.
You want a phone that was designed for a doctor’s office with full integration to Epic? You want a phone that natively displays the current manufacturing plant operations status? You want a phone for a salesperson that dips into SalesForce.com or Microsoft CRM to let them know an important person is calling? You want a phone that looks up caller information in ServiceNow to let you know that the caller has several high-priority service tickets open with you? This is all extremely doable! And it’s all because of SIP.
Driving Innovation with SIP
I’m a huge fan of SIP. It’s the protocol that lets us start with old-school telephony, but lets us find game-changing innovative solutions for our customers. Are there things to pay attention to when converting from TDM/H.323 to SIP? Definitely. Can these issues be overcome? Usually, but not always (think fax machines). But SIP is such a powerful protocol, you have to make sure you’re at least considering it. I get really nervous when I hear about someone buying a new solution or upgrading to one that isn’t at least enabled for SIP. It should be part of your roadmap.
ConvergeOne can make your move to SIP a game-changer.
Is SIP part of your roadmap? Make sure you're taking advantage of the many benefits it can bring to your business. Contact ConvergeOne today to speak with our expert team about SIP.
Topics: Unified Communications
