Broadvox, a SIP Trunking and VoIP communications provider announced the formation of a strategic relationship with Panasonic Communications Company that has agreed to resell the Broadvox GO! SIP Trunking products through its extensive dealer network.Panasonic has an established reputation for delivering tailor-made business communications systems to the SMB and distributed enterprise. Similarly, Broadvox is recognized for providing customized SIP Trunking solutions. The companies say that combining scalable IP communications systems from Panasonic with Broadvox GO! SIP Trunking products enables customers to realize immediate cost savings on their telephone connection charges. Broadvox GO! SIP Trunking products include unlimited local and long distance calling with options such as DIDs, E911, LNP (local number portability), dynamic load balancing and business continuity.
In a similar announcement, Broadvox and Toshiba have also entered into a similar arrangement on behalf of the Toshiba dealer base. In my post, SIP Trunks: A Call To the Wild, I stated that one SIP provider won't do well for any manufacturer--they all need many. Interoperability, standards and choices are what users and dealers/VARS/Interconnects want and thus far it's going to be a long road to freedom.
Moving a business across town, to another county, city or even state is a portability feature of SIP trunking. With SIP trunks you can retain your numbers and not worry about enduring numerous fees and charges as with the Telcos. In the past when I did site surveys of new business locations for customers I had to worry about getting the right dial tone and services available at the local CO serving the new location. I'd much rather worry about just getting adequate bandwidth to the site, and my guess is--so would many others. Still the perils of traveling down the SIP highway...it's a journey of many challenges.
For the large enterprise users, you're facing pressures of finding cost benefits, but then you're challenged with keeping SIP trunks up, alive and well. Forget the 40-70% in savings, claim half of that and then spend the other half figuring it out. You also need to reckon yourselves on putting skin in the game because your SIP providers won't figure it all out for you. The providers vary in their services, SLAs and "features" and thinking back to the early days of IPT--hold, transfer, do-not-disturb and a long list of other "basic features" we would never call "features" but standard as to what's on every phone system. That's where SIP trunking is today and I don't think my previous estimate of 10 years is too far off.
In SMB/E the issue isn't so much as a concern as to which provider can offer me national access, as it is to which provider can offer me the greatest value and choice of features. SIP providers can open up to new markets to the SMB/E, and providing bandwidth, it seems, is easier of a problem to deal with than is getting dial tone. Then, to get DID numbers for the low prices offered by the SIP providers isn't something you can ignore for long. The Telcos, for too long, have charged premium prices to setup DID and then maintain them. Looks like the Telcos are going to have some interesting challenges ahead of them.
Large enterprise, it seems, is going to benefit from these early adopters and experiences. It's going to take time and effort to reap optimal benefits and even more time to fully understand and learn how to deal with SIP trunks on a daily basis so as there's not an erosion of benefits, that are alluded to if you read Eric's post. This is exactly what happened in the early days of IPT to those dealers and VARs. More IPT/SIP means more trouble calls and that's a metric that should grab your attention.
