5 Reasons to Switch From Your Legacy PRI to SIP Trunking

Migrating from a legacy Private Branch Exchange (PBX) telecom system — where calls are transmitted using a Primary Rate Interface (PRI) T1 line — to a SIP trunking service — where calls are transmitted over the internet using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)—offers five key advantages:

1. Cost savings

Although phone service comes down to more than cost, there’s no denying the attractiveness of saving money when you migrate from a legacy telecom system to a SIP trunking provider. SIP trunks can save you money in two ways:

• SIP trunks reduce the costs of long-distance and international calls, because calls travel most of the way over IP networks before connecting with the public switched telephone network (PTSN) to route calls locally to their destinations. Because of that, long-distance calls are often charged as local calls.
• While legacy telecom providers tend to charge based on capacities, such as offering a certain amount of minutes per month or even unlimited minutes with fixed, lengthy contracts, SIP trunk providers typically offer pay-as-you-go pricing. This means that you only pay for the phone service you use, rather than getting locked into expensive monthly plans where you pay for capacity you don’t consume.

2. Quick scalability

Whether your business adds new employees to your headquarters, has seasonal requirements such as needing additional call capacity around the winter holidays, or needs to pare down phone service that’s not being used, SIP trunks can easily be scaled up or down. SIP trunk solutions are cloud-based, so once the initial system is set up, you can easily add or remove lines digitally. In comparison, legacy telecom systems typically require complex physical installations to add more lines, and inflexible contracts make it difficult and costly to scale down if your organization needs to make a change.

3. Global reach

Similar to the advantages of scaling with SIP trunks, cloud-based VoIP systems make it easier to add global coverage than legacy systems do. For one, SIP trunking providers work with multiple telecom carriers to ensure global coverage, rather than the way a legacy telecom provider might rely on only its own carrier network. Zentrunk from Plivo, for instance, works with more than 1,600 carrier networks to provide users the ability to communicate with anyone in more than 190 countries. These partnerships help ensure both premium call quality and broad coverage. Moreover, SIP trunk users can easily add local, national, mobile, and toll-free numbers. If your business has clients in several countries, those customers can reach you via a number that’s convenient and cost-effective for them.

4. Easy support

When you need to add services or run into an issue with your hardware, you want a quick, painless solution. Legacy telecom providers don’t always offer 24/7 support, and their levels of dedicated service can vary based on customer size or location. SIP trunking providers, by contrast, tend to be available 24/7 to provide support to help you troubleshoot a technology problem or adjust your service.

5. Transparency

Using SIP trunks tend to come with more transparency than legacy telecom systems in areas ranging from pricing to usage. Pay-as-you-go pricing makes it clear exactly what you’re paying for, and you can often choose different pricing models from your provider based on your needs, as opposed to getting locked into an inflexible, hard-to-decipher contract from a legacy provider. In addition, the cloud-based nature of SIP trunk providers makes it easy to digitally keep track of phone usage, even for specific lines. Zentrunk, for instance, offers a self-service portal where users can view call detail records (CDR) that help you clearly understand your phone service usage, such as determining which offices or departments incur the most phone costs.

Migrating from a legacy telecom system to a cloud-based VoIP solution using SIP trunks offers several advantages, and the decision comes down to far more than cost. Switching to SIP trunks can improve your overall phone service in terms of both technology features and experience.

To better understand how to select the right SIP trunk provider for your needs, see our blog post on 10 factors to consider. To learn more about SIP trunking and see how Zentrunk can help with your communications needs, get in touch with our team.