BT Global Services expands SIP trunking services

BT touts reduced call costs to US and Europe with expanded SIP trunking services

BT’s Global Services arm has announced it is to expand the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunking service it offers in the UK by using it in conjunction with its Onevoice service.

Moving to a SIP-based architecture means that instead of calls travelling over standard public switched telephone network (PSTN), they travel over an IP data network.

More IP-based multimedia applications can be used over corporate data networks, than traditional phone lines, and the number of users can be scaled more easily.

Another big advantage is the presence-management that SIP provides, especially for firms looking to integrate their telephony systems with Microsoft's Office Communications Server technology.

In the next 12 months, BT’s SIP trunking service will be available in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France and the US.

The new service is likely to appeal to multinationals with offices in those countries, as it will allow them to make savings on international and premium rate phone calls.

BT Global Services global portfolio vice president Neil Sutton said: “SIP trunking allows customers introduce collaboration applications that increase productivity and save cost.”

BT says the move will provides users with more ways in which they can collaborate, whether they are office based or on the move, It also said that it sees the expanded services as a potential step towards unified communications for its customers.

Quocirca principal communications analyst Rob Bamforth said that he could see that enterprises and the carrier would see cost savings as a result of the switch to trunked IP.

BT’s Onevoice service is an end-to-end service for voice communications that is designed to enable firms to consolidate disparate networks into a single, converged infrastructure.