SIP trunking explained: The SIP acronym stands for Session Initiation Protocol, but let’s try and cover some SIP trunking basics without using a lot of telecom jargon. Here’s a simple SIP definition: SIP Trunking allows business phone systems to use an internet connection instead of a traditional phone line for both toll free numbers and local numbers. Why should you care? Because SIP trunking costs less than traditional phone service, it scales easier, and it offers increased phone service reliability.

Cut Costs: The first major benefit of SIP trunking is cost. SIP trunking can save your business as much as 60-80% over traditional ISDN phone lines. Why? Because SIP gives you access to phone lines over the Internet, making local calls, mobile calls, long distance calls, and even international calls much cheaper

Scale Your Business: The second major benefit of SIP trunk services is scalability. SIP trunks are hosted virtually. There’s no physical phone system equipment. No closet full of complex telecom hardware. If you need to set up new numbers (regardless of geographical location) you can do so in seconds. And if your business grows, all the necessary infrastructure is already there to handle any increase in call traffic.

Increase Reliability: The third major benefit of SIP is increased phone service reliability. SIP trunking is cloud-based which increases reliability through redundancy. In other words, if there is an outage SIP trunking providers can reroute your services to a backup data line or forward your phone system to mobile phones to keep your business up and running.

Session Initiated Protocol, also known as SIP, was developed to form real-time multimedia sessions between participants. 'Trunks' is a traditional telecom term which basically describes a group of phone lines. SIP Trunks connect to your premise PBX and replace existing PRI or POTS lines to the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network).