U4 Press Box

Monday, December 22, 2008

U4 Announces SIP Trunk Offering

SYRACUSE, Indiana – December 22th, 2008 – “U4 now has SIP Trunking available for immediate use,” said Rich Hays, Marketing Director of U4. “This is the second in a series of VOIP related services U4 is introducing to the market. SIP offers the flexibility demanded in today’s communications. We will be the first to admit that SIP is somewhat of a hard concept to grasp, but think of it as communications crossing land lines, cell phones, and internet connections. It allows you to better control how your voice and data are transmitted from location to location. The clearest statement that can be made is ‘All you need is an internet connection to communicate.’ A brief explanation of SIP follows.”

What is SIP? - SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) is a de facto VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) standard that describes the basic signals used to initiate, manage, and terminate communications sessions. For the non-technical, a SIP trunk describes the use of an Internet connection as a replacement for traditional telephone circuits receiving incoming calls and allowing the placement of outgoing calls. Local telephone numbers can be called by people anywhere in the world using the Internet and "SIP trunks." SIP trunk is somewhat a misnomer. SIP Trunks are not really trunks or dedicated circuits at all. Rather, the number of SIP trunks that a business requires is determined by the number of simultaneous calls.
Why is SIP unique? It goes beyond voice. It is the industry-backed control standard for multimedia communications or convergence – voice, data, video, and mobile. Because SIP trunks are not fixed in capacity, they grow rapidly with the needs of the enterprise. In addition, SIP trunks can be delivered anywhere served by sufficient levels of Internet connectivity. This flexibility allows for you to better shape to your communication needs. Features like “Find Me, Follow Me” and Video Phones are simple to set up.
What are the Benefits of SIP Trunking? Location Independence - Traditional voice is attached to a physical location or a piece of equipment. SIP VOIP flexibility allows call routing to any IP address worldwide including home offices, soft phones, cell phones and video phones. If there is a broadband internet connection at the location, a SIP Trunk can be used to handle the communications.
Cost Efficiency - SIP trunks are far more cost effective that traditional TDM circuits. A typical small business could easily save 25% or much more on their monthly communications bill.
Pure IP connection - A SIP Trunk is a VOIP trunk that uses SIP for session control and establishes a pure IP connection. This is important for 3 reasons:
1. The VOIP trunk can handle multi-media (voice, data, video and mobile).
2. The circuit-switched hand-off to the PSTN is not needed – lowering costs:
• Fewer hardware interfaces
• Fewer PSTN circuits
• Fewer hardware interfaces to maintain
3. Direct SIP trunking to IP PBXs and soft switches means no additional hardware to achieve end-to-end VOIP.
4. Direct Inward Dialing (DID) numbers can be provided from virtually any location in North America and a large number of other countries. This permits enterprises to establish a "virtual" presence with incoming calls ringing at a centralized facility.
“When comparing Sip Trunks and VOIP service to land lines, U4 has seen between 40% to 60% savings,” said Hays.