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Why do service providers and the industry at large insist on calling a phone line delivered over an IP network a “SIP Trunk”?
Customers do not want SIP trunks, they want business phone lines delivered via IP.
It is funny that no one outside of the industry knows what the heck a SIP trunk is, yet every company that provides IP based business phone lines continues to use this nomenclature.
Need proof?
Take a look at the Google search queries for SIP Trunking for last month.
As per my favorite keyword research tool, about 300. I venture to bet more than half those queries come from people who sell SIP trunks.
Now, if you take a look at the Google search queries for say business phone service or business VoIP, you will find that there is more than 10 times the amount of search queries.
Businesses do not know what a SIP trunk is and honestly they really do not care. They are not looking for SIP trunks.
What they are looking for is reliability, quality and low cost telephone service. The transport mechanism is secondary.
So service providers, save your marketing dollars and come up with a new way to market business phone lines over an IP network because again customers do not know what SIP trnks are and certainly aren’t looking for them.
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I have SIP trunks.
I teach Service Providers and end users how to install Cisco IP based phone systems and agree. Most people do not know what a SIP Trunk is (Especially legacy phone guys) or why they would want it. I agree that as good a technology as SIP is, they should spend less time selling the Buzzword and more time on what makes their service stand out.
While some customers will know what a SIP trunk is, and will seek it out and buy it, these customers represent a shrinking fraction of the overall market. The mainstream market doesn’t buy SIP trunks, at least not by that name. I’d take it a step further: the mainstream market doesn’t by VoIP, by that name. For example, none of the cable VoIP services are marketed as VoIP services, preferring to call the service “digital voice” or some similar pseudonym. Service providers who market their services as VoIP are barking up the wrong tree. Read the rest of my rant on my blog at http://ikeelliott.typepad.com/telecosm/2008/01/voip-doesnt-sel.html
I think you may be confusing a SIP trunk and a VoIP phone service. While I agree, that most consumers have no clue what a SIP trunk is, they also don’t know the difference between an FXO interface and an FXS interface.
SIP trunking is normally geared to someone either managing a PBX or a provider of value added telephony services (such as an ITSP). It obviously makes a lot of sense to buy trunking which can terminate via Ethernet to the IP PBX or gateway, vs. having to purchase more expensive legacy telco gear to terminate traditional telephony interface types such as FXO, CAS T-1’s or PRI’s often delivered via gateways.
If you were to purchase a VOIP line, you still have to interface that FXS handoff from the ATA to your PBX and would realize no savings on your hardware expenditure per se. You also don’t get the mult-session signalling inherent in most SIP trunks. You would get something akin to call waiting on the second call via a traditional VOIP line.
For those with a traditional telephony background along with an IP background, the distinction between a VOIP line and SIP trunk makes a certain amount of sense.
@James Herrington
I hope you’re not referring to me when you state that “you may be confusing a SIP trunk and VoIP phone service.”
I’m not confusing them. I now each inside and out. That doesn’t change the fact that no one wants a “SIP Trunk.”
Businesses want a phone line - they don’t care how it’s delivered.
Residential folks also want a phone line - they don’t care how it’s delivered.
SIP trunking is a crappy tech term. It needs to go away.
Those who ask for and order SIP trunking know what they’re ordering. The same way back in 1993 those who ordered an ISDN BRI 2B+D circuit knew what they were ordering while others had no idea.
Our industry has more acronyms and buzz words than most and for the most part I dislike a great deal of the jargon. However, as I stated earlier this is indeed a distinction with a difference. I have completely different expectations for a SIP trunk vs. business phone service vs. business VOIP service and therefore I understand the need for the differentiation.
Maybe you have a better term to describe a multichannel voice communications service normall delivered via an Ethernet handoff that uses SIP as it’s signalling protocol. I prefer SIP trunk.
@ James
You’re missing the point. You (the guy who knows) is different from the rest of the world (who don’t).
Business owners don’t care about SIP, etc. They need a way to speak with their employees and their customers. It doesn’t matter what the underlying technology is called.
So why confuse them and waste time/marketing dollars educating them about a new term?
Technologists and the marketers who help them should start calling a spade a spade. No one is enamored with the lingo, except, well folks who “know.”
@ James
How about “business phone line delivered via IP?” or if you like acronyms, how about POVS…Plain Old VoIP Service.
Garrett I think your problem is your in Marketing, you don’t seem to understand one fundamental flaw with your entire view, and that is that the acronyms where never meant for the ignorant masses. They are by and large for those who know. Those of us who need to actually do the work of making these systems work. So there is the problem of course the masses where never meant to understand it, so changing the acronym will do nothing. Here’s an Ides why don’t you marketing boys make up your own customer friendly acronyms and leave ours alone. Because heres the fact, most people don’t even know what VOIP stands for, they just know that its digital phone service that they can buy over the internet. So why don’t you boys in marketing call it IPS, Internet Phone Service. Its kinda like the Digital Cable thing we don’t go out and tell people oh thats IPTV, we call it Digital Cable when dealing with customers. See the problem is not that we in the Technology industry are over enamored with acronyms its a method of communicating quickly tech specs required for smooth communications between devices. The problem is that many market boys decided that the acronyms would help to make their products seem superior and would make them sound smarter. Don’t be give yourself a gold star yet Garrett, because here is the really funny part. The main concept of marketing is to essentially to quantify the business to the public, you job is to take the tech specs and tell the customer what the product is and what it can do for them…… So see your kinda the translator. So if we got rid of our little self pointed acronyms, you really would not have a job. Now do I want SIP Trunks, you bet your rear I do, its cheaper. Now your job working for marketing in a VOIP supply store is to make it clear what equipment works with what services, so your job is the quantify down what works together, but I am willing to bet without some tech dick like myself to tell you what standards each piece of equipment uses that you would not have a clue what to tell the customer, would you? So if we were to roll all of the standards for VOIP into your POVS acronym and I bought 25 phones a PBX and subscribed to a service and they all claimed to POVS systems and they did not work together, and you told me to buy them with only some pointless acronym that does not define the particular standards used by each piece of equipment, who do you think I would blame?
@Garrett
So you ended off this topic with a pat on your back on how smart you are. Good, won’t deny it. But why leave us hanging? If you can call something by a name which resonates with the people…How would you call SIP trunks…?
I’ve had to resort to calling it “Internet Lines” as lame as it may sound. The thing is, it has a pro and con. The pro is, there ain’t no way a “customer” doesn’t understand what he’s getting. The con is, I can’t seem to get the customer to take the plunge and overcome the aversion to IP based or rather more specifically, phone service that depends on their Internet connection….
Your insight would be appreciated.
Mike
@ Mike
I though I said this above (maybe not it’s a post I wrote over a year ago). Since I believe that voice is voice (regardless of transport mechanism) the best approach is to call it a business voice line. Then educate the customer on how’s it delivered.
At the end of the day you decide who your competing against. Do you want to compete for market share against SIP trunking providers, VoIP service providers (who are always driving prices to zero) or would you rather steal business from a traditional voice services provider.
The money and the margins are in competing against the traditional voice service providers, not “in-industry.”
If you’ve got a thing for technology buzz words, then perhaps you could exercise terms such as digital voice or business VoIP line.
Even calling it an internet voice line is a step better…heck Skype touts their service as an “online phone number.” Watch them brand that one all the way to the bank.
The idea of marketing it as a SIP trunk, is in fact good marketing. The idea is to keep saying it so the public becomes familiar and educated as to what it is. When DSL came out no one knew what it was, Verizon waited for all the companies to educate the public on what it was, and then rolled over them.
@ mr fixit
I agree with the Verizon strategy that you outlined, but still hold firm that it’s not a friendly name.
If you look at any of the large companies offering business VoIP services (cable companies, AT&T, etc) none are calling their business voice offering that is delivered over IP a “SIP trunk” or even a VoIP trunk. They sometimes don’t even mention VoIP.
I think people don’t understand what was written in my post…
“SIP trunking” is not a bad technology. I use it daily. It is great.
“SIP Trunking” is not a bad technical term. It describes what it is.
“SIP Trunking” is a bad outward facing name for a voice/VoIP companies business voice offering.
Those with enough money to “brand the term” so that general public becomes educated and aware are not using the term. And those using the term certainly don’t have the type of money it takes to brand the term on a massive scale.
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