For companies wanting to make full use of their installed IP PBX (News - Alert), SIP trunking is the solution.

SIP trunks can offer significant cost savings for businesses, eliminating the need for local PSTN gateways, costly ISDN BRIs or PRIs. SIP trunking combines voice and data over a single broadband circuit, eliminating the need for a traditional phone service and saving customers up to 70 percent off their phone bills.

When selecting a SIP trunking provider, there are many factors to consider. Two factors you should fully evaluate before selecting a provider are the business continuity options and available add-on features. 

When a natural disaster strikes, we are all reminded of the need for contingency plans for data as well as voice communications. However, interrupted service can be caused by unexpected call spikes, power outages, PBX failures, loss of connectivity, as well as a natural disaster. When evaluating what procedures to implement in a failover/recovery plan for your business, keep in mind that the number of options is as varied. The technical sophistication of failover options is likely to correlate with the expertise of the service provider.

Failover options from most Internet telephony service providers are either call forwarding or IP address forwarding. Call forwarding is the most popular choice for small to medium-sized businesses, as it does not require a backup PBX in a different physical location. IP address forwarding generally appeals to larger companies with disaster recovery plans that choose to implement services from more than one carrier, or who have multiple locations.

The final – yet very important – step in selecting a SIP trunking provider is to evaluate the available add-on features. Not all SIP solutions are created equal. When creating a customized SIP trunking solution, it’s important to pay careful attention to the feature-sets. At Broadvox (News - Alert), for example, we offer unique add-on features that provide key advantages for optimizing your service – one of these options is Call Bursting. Call Bursting is a secondary SIP trunk that allows your business to temporarily utilize more concurrent call sessions than the number you’ve purchased.

Mike Gruszka is director of product development at Broadvox (www.broadvox.com).