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Posts Tagged ‘Voice over Internet Protocol’


SIP trunking on the rise as VoIP surges

Posted By : Joel Rourke On April 8th, 2011

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Posted in VoIP | No Comments »

As the VoIP and unified communications (UC) markets made a comeback in 2010, SIP trunking had a break-out year. This is according to a report by Infonetics Research, which found that the VoIP service market reached $49.8 billion in 2010, a 43 percent increase from 2008.

What’s more, Infonetics predicted that the combined business, residential and small-office/home-office market for VoIP services would skyrocket to $74.5 billion in 2015. Infonetics also noted that managed IP PBX business VoIP service revenue is expected to more than double from 2010 to 2015.

One of the report’s most startling findings was revenue growth of 143 percent in SIP trunking, making it the fastest-growing segment of the VoIP services market.

For small and mid-sized businesses, these findings lead to a natural question: What is SIP trunking?

For years, large enterprises have leveraged this technology to save on their telecommunications bills. Now, SIP trunking is available for smaller organizations, which can reap significant savings as well.

Session Initiated Protocol (SIP) allows businesses to install a PBX to use Voice-over-IP (VoIP). It essentially goes around the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network, or the traditional copper-and-switches telecom infrastructure) to make phone calls inexpensive. If both parties on a call are using SIP devices, the call can cost just a fraction of a cent per minute. If only one end of the call is using a SIP device, there will still be some savings, though not as much.

SIP trunks can create major cost-savings for companies, which may no longer need local PSTN gateways, ISDN BRIs (Basic Rate Interfaces) or PRIs (Primary Rate Interfaces). Most new phone systems include built in support for SIP. SIP-enabled phone systems also provide a greater feature set, such as virtual phone numbers, follow-me phone numbers, and more.

As SIP trunks continue to grow, expect a gradual decline in the use of T1 lines for voice and data. The increased affordability and reliability of high-end DSL, fiber and other high-speed services, paired with the huge cost advantages of VoIP, makes T1s and other expensive, dedicated lines less attractive to small and mid-sized companies.


A mobility solution to crush your cellular phone bill

Posted By : Best in UC On March 28th, 2011

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Posted in Mobility | No Comments »

This blog first appeared on Best in UC.

Imagine opening up your company’s next mobile phone bill. Now, imagine that the cellular charges on that bill dropped by 80 percent, and that you can expect similar savings every month to come.

For years, the unified communications (UC) industry has struggled to create a complex handoff that can save users thousands on their phone bills. Now, ShoreTel has successfully implemented this technology in its new ShoreTel Mobility solution.

The technical execution may be complex, but the concept is simple. Smartphones can operate in two modes: Wi-Fi and cellular. In cellular mode, the phone relies on your carrier’s network to place and receive calls. In Wi-Fi mode, the phone can leverage a wireless data network for those calls. By switching to Wi-Fi, callers can lower the number of expensive cellular minutes used. Even better, then can enjoy better call quality and improved battery life.

ShoreTel Mobility solution relies on a gateway called the ShoreTel Mobility Router. This piece of hardware automatically selects the best network, whether Wi-Fi or cellular, for each call. It allows you to create policies to determine how calls should be routed, or it can be set to choose the least-costly option. A vast majority of the time, that results in calls moving to the existing Wi-Fi network, which dramatically reduced the number of cellular minutes purchased from your wireless carrier.

But the savings don’t stop there. When users are traveling away from the office, the Mobility Router still helps control costs. With the industry’s first TLS/SSL-based connection, it allows users to jump on any public Wi-Fi connection or a private connection for which they have a WEP key. That means leveraging VoIP for Wi-Fi calling from home, hotels, offices and hotspots. International roaming charges are slashed.

The handoff between cellular and Wi-Fi networks is not noticeable to users. When a salesman leaves the office for his commute home while talking on the phone, his call will automatically switch from Wi-Fi to cellular network. If he’s still on the phone when he arrives home, the call will again switch automatically, this time onto his home Wi-Fi connection.

With a one-time investment in the ShoreTel Mobility Router, companies can create 80 percent cellular call savings, plus give their workforce better call quality, reliability and battery life. But the benefits don’t stop there. In an upcoming blog, we’ll explain how the ShoreTel Mobility Solution improves productivity for team member as well.


Shoretel wins Product of the Year award

Posted By : Best in UC On March 10th, 2011

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Posted in Industry news | No Comments »

This blog first appeared on Best in UC.

Shoretel once again proved its leadership in the unified communications (UC) space, winning a 2010 Product of the Year award from Internet Telephony magazine, which covers the IP communications industry.

The awards, in their 13th year, recognize the industry’s most innovative new products, as well as companies that demonstrate vision, leadership and thoroughness.

ShoreTel was recognized for its ShoreTel Mobility Router, an innovative and highly scalable network appliance that fuses enterprise wireless LANs, carrier cellular networks, IP telephony and location technology to extend voice and UC to mobile devices.

The router lets users make and receive calls from both the enterprise and personal mobile phone numbers by automatically selecting the best network (Wi-Fi or cellular) with fast and automatic network handover, to optimize cost, call quality and battery life.

“The editors of Internet Telephony have verified that ShoreTel displays quality and innovation, plus provides real needs in the marketplace,” said Rich Tehrani, chief executive officer for TMC, the parent company of Internet Telephony magazine. “I would like to congratulate ShoreTel for its commitment to advancing IP communication technologies.”

ShoreTel helps keep companies’ UC strategy simple, with a streamlined design that offers sophisticated features without complexity.

In the case of the ShoreTel Mobility Router, companies can lower their costs while making it easier to manage and understand cellular usage. For example, the router uses policy-based, least-cost routing to reduce the costs of mobile calls. The router leverages a company’s network when callers are in the building, further reducing the price of mobile usage. Coverage can even be extended to home and public Wi-Fi through a secure TLS/SSL-based connection.

Finally, the router provides great visibility and data about cellular usage, as well as the status and availability of mobile users. If information is power, this provides the tools for companies to gain unprecedented control of their UC budgets, while still providing superior functionality and services.

Congratulations to ShoreTel. We look forward to more innovative products in the near future.

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