Recently, the market segment that interconnects PBX to PSTN using SIP/VoIP technology, called SIP Trunking has seen dramatic growth. It is generally agreed that low costs associated with SIP Trunks and increased deployments of IP-PBX have contributed to this success. The question is how will this market evolve in the coming months.
There is no question that SIP Trunks cost less than corresponding PRI costs. A recent study reported that generally the savings are the order of 15% (oh where did I leave that bookmark?). But some of the operational metrics are much to be desired. For example, the industry average for installation is 60 to 90 days. Majority do not have an SLA for call blocking. It is reasonable to take a few weeks to install the facilities associated with PRI and T1 trunks. If SIP Trunks are going to be facility based then it is possible there is a need for lead time. Clearly there is a need for quick access to trunks to handle short and unplanned surge in voice calls. So it would be nice if SIP Trunks are tariffed like Amazon charges for EC2 instance. Amazon has three pricing structure that they call “demand, reserved and spot”. Current SIP Trunking pricing is analogous to “reserved instances”: customer pays for reserving a certain number of trunks and then additionally pays based on usage of those trunks. If an enterprise has a need for additional trunks to handle temporary surge in calls as there would be due to a promotion say, it would be nice if they can get additional trunks and pay for usage, if at a higher rate compared to reserved trunks. Alternatively, enterprises may prefer to place calls, like cold calls when the rates are low enough. This will be like Amazon’s spot pricing. In this case, an enterprise would be informed when the Trunk price reaches below a stated threshold. Here it is assumed that the Trunk provider will adjust price of the trunks based on the load. If Amazon or Google were to enter the market, I fully envision this happening. I am surprised that Skype Connect has not yet adopted this pricing scheme. Even though Twilio and Voxeo are not really viewed as Trunking providers, they also could adopt this model.
I am surprised to note that Trunking providers do not provide SLA for call blocking. If they were to offer reserved instance and so on, it is imperative on stating the call blocking probability. Otherwise reserved trunks do not have a meaning. So I anticipate the market move on these two aspects of the service.
Posted by aswath at June 1, 2011 03:46 PM