SIP Savvy Checklist - 5 Questions to Ask Your Customer

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SIP Savvy Checklist:

These are 5 questions to ask your customer before recommending SIP Trunking as a solution.

1. Are you going to change all your lines to SIP trunks?   
1. This will determine how much bandwidth the customer will need to reserve for the SIP trunking service. Round up to 100k per call.
2. Fax-over-SIP works to a point.  If the customer sends or receives more than three or four pages, you may want to keep the fax on a Plain Old Telephone Service (POTs) line.
3. Alarm lines and credit cards still require a POTs line.
2. How many simultaneous calls do you need?
1. At Vintalk we only limit the outbound call paths. The only limitations on inbound calls are the customer’s available bandwidth and the capabilities of their phone system.
2. Don’t forget to include conferencing in your review of the network.  If the business has multiple people calling out to a conference bridge, each of those calls uses an outbound call path.
3. Will you get both the internet and the SIP trunks from the same provider?
1. If the customer supplies the internet (BYOB – bring your own bandwidth) the SIP provider is at the mercy of the BYOB provider. If the customer has quality issues, the SIP trunks will have quality issues.
2. If Vintalk provides both the bandwidth and the SIP trunks, we make sure the bandwidth is provisioned with Quality of Service (QoS) to give the voice traffic priority and ensure the best possible call quality for the customer.
4. Will the provider offer any equipment like an edge router or other edge device?
1. A SIP-friendly router will help control the connection and ensure that the voice traffic is taking precedence over all other traffic leaving the local area network.
2. With the Vintalk Voice Router we can monitor the customer’s connection and be alerted whenever quality issues may arise.
5. Is the phone system compatible with SIP?
1. If the customer’s phone system is more than five years old, chances are it is not compatible without a major upgrade, if that is even possible.
2. Vintalk does provide SIP Gateways that will allow the customer to continue to use their old phone system and take advantage of the cost savings of SIP.
3. If the phone system is SIP ready, make sure that you have tested it and it is compatible with Vintalk’s service.

Be sure to compare long distance rates, international long distance rates, per minute charges vs. monthly bundle, monthly Direct Inward Dial numbers (DID) charges, and E911 compatibility.

There are a number of other things to consider when moving to SIP trunks, but the above should give you a good starting point.

Ken Adams, COO, Vintalk