VoIP and Simultaneous Ring Phones

Today's employees have a large number of devices at their disposal. In addition to the office phone, they have their own personal mobile device, a tablet, and several laptops. No longer is a traditional 9-to-5 job the only time when a person is in contact with their office. Unfortunately, the PSTN phone system has not kept up with this changing environment. Telephone numbers are still tightly connected to single devices with each having a separate one. Migrating from one to the other is not seamless and there's no getting around the 1 to 1 ratio of telephone numbers to devices.

What we need is for our telephone addressing system to be as flexible as that used by e-mail. It should be accessible from any device anywhere in the world and not be tied down to any single network. Your e-mail depends on the Internet and doesn't care about which telecom carrier you're obtaining service from. It works seamlessly over Wi-Fi, Ethernet connections, and mobile data. It's high time we brought regular phone calls into the 21st-century and imbued it with the features that we've come to expect from an advanced communication network.

While it'll be a long time before the telecom carriers themselves change the model, businesses have the option to jump into this new system right away using the power of VoIP. There are many different types of VoIP service - the well-known ones are geared towards the retail customer instead of the professional. Business organizations will need to obtain service from an SIP provider. Once they do so, each user will be allotted what is known as a "SIP address". This looks very similar to a regular e-mail in structure and indeed the architecture of the two systems bears many similarities.

Since these will be paid accounts, your SIP addresses can be identical to your e-mail so you will have your own domain name for branding purposes. Depending on the specific provider and their pricing plans, you can link several devices to a single SIP address and have them all ring simultaneously or one at a time as per your preferences. This allows your employees to always be available and answer any calls using the most convenient device instead of being shackled to just one. It also means that clients need keep track of a single telephone number. In short, it simplifies and streamlines the entire calling process.

Simultaneous ring functionality is also known as "SIP forking". It is one of the key differentiating features of a VoIP system. Make sure that your SIP service provider offers it before signing up with them.

Back to Basics in SIP/ VoIP

There are two ways to use an SIP VoIP system: You can make and receive regular calls using the telephone number allotted to you by your service provider, or you can use an SIP address to make calls entirely over the Internet for free. The latter scenario is similar to a chat application or an e-mail client where it doesn't cost you anything to send and receive messages. After all, you already paid for your Internet connection. But in order to do this, the other person needs to be using VoIP as well. And not just any VoIP application. They need to be using an SIP compatible VoIP system with their own SIP address. This way, communication between two people can take place just like e-mail. Even the architecture is somewhat the same.

So what exactly is an SIP address? Again taking the comparison with e-mail just a step further, the address is composed of two parts - the username and the domain. Both are separated by the "@" symbol so the final form will look something like "somename@yourdomain.com". The latter part of the address will depend on whether or not you are a free or paid customer and if you want your own domain to be mentioned. For this, you need to have access to your domain tools including your DNS controls that support SRV records.

With this functionality, you will be able to maintain an SIP address that is visually identical to the e-mail ID that you provide your employees with. This makes it easy for them to integrate SIP calling into the contacts so that they can talk to each other entirely over the Internet for free. As a bonus, they can make use of specialized high-quality HD voice codecs that provide crystal clear voice clarity.

It's easy to see the benefits of merging voice calls with e-mail. You can create a business directory of employees and enable "one click calling" since the e-mail address is the same as the SIP address. Indeed, the goal is "Unified Communications" or UC where all of an organization's communications is presented and managed by a single graphical user interface.

Difference Between SIP Trunking and VOIP

Are you confused about what is the difference between SIP trunking and VOIP; how are they related and what are the differences? In simplest terms the practical answer would go like this:

1. VOIP "voice over IP" is a generic term used to cover all voice traffic over the internet protocol.

2. SIP trunking is simply voice over IP, using the SIP signaling protocol, but instead of using a single SIP user the service provider is providing many. Basically like a T1E1 link... but using VOIP with multiple trunks.

The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is an application-layer control (signaling) protocol for creating, modifying, and terminating sessions with one or more participants. It can be used to create two-party, multiparty, or multicast sessions that include Internet telephone calls, multimedia distribution, and multimedia conferences.

Voice over Internet Protocol, also called VOIP, IP Telephony, Internet telephony, Broadband telephony, Broadband Phone and Voice over Broadband is the routing of voice conversations over the Internet or through any other IP-based network.

SIP in some cases is a Type of VOIP.

Since SIP is Session Initiation Protocol, and is a form of VOIP it is used as a digital voice emulator/PRI replacement.

It gives VOIP service more capabilities, such as DID's (Direct Inward Dial numbers) The benefit of this service on the commercial level is the ability to avoid buying a PRI card (down the road--not right now in all cases) and just plug straight into the phone system.

Essentially, the power of PRI without the cost or limitations. SIP is only limited by your bandwidth, and carriers are coming up with some pretty interesting options.

This will be an area that many will need to become more familiar with, especially in the call center world.