SIP Trunking: Move It or Lose IT

If there is one thing that's patently obvious about Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunking, it's that the industry is poised to grow. Some research indicates that SIP trunking grew about 88 percent between 2010 and 2011, and sales of session border controllers (SBCs) and demand for advanced IP services indicates that such growth is likely to be matched or exceeded this year.

The largest growth likely will come from MSOs and Internet telephony service providers (ITSPs), with incumbent carriers introducing SIP trunking at a slower pace -- largely because they're trying to eke out as much revenue from their legacy equipment as possible. Mobile network operators will continue to work with SIP, but they're not in a position to provide it with superior voice quality -- yet.

Meanwhile, SIP trunking is displacing other forms of telephony services in enterprises. MSOs will introduce SIP trunking to more business customers over the next 24 months, requiring that the incumbents and competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) follow suit or lose their customer base.

These are some of the key findings in this month’s Heavy Reading IP Services Insider, "OTT & Cloud Give a Boost to SIP Trunking." The report examines the SIP trunking market, analyzing the most lucrative verticals of SIP trunking and discussing drivers and challenges in the industry. It includes a comparative analysis of solutions available, examines the geographic landscape of the market and details trends that will likely occur in the industry over the next 18 to 24 months.

Service providers risk losing the ability to sell the high-value, end-to-end IP solutions any time a call must traverse the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and be converted from IP into TDM. Increasingly, they're facing the reality that customers are migrating to over-the-top (OTT) providers. Meanwhile, their most profitable customer base -- the large enterprise -- largely has adopted IP within their own network and are now looking for IP services between locations. If service providers don't offer such services, enterprises will migrate their traffic and service revenue.

As a result, service provider interest in SIP trunking will continue increasing over the next 24 months. As that happens, the growth of SBC deployments in the enterprise will help address enterprise security, reliability and interoperability concerns, further increasing SIP trunk demand.

— Denise Culver, Research Analyst, Heavy Reading IP Services Insider

The report, OTT & Cloud Give a Boost to SIP Trunking, is available as part of an annual subscription (six issues) to Heavy Reading IP Services Insider, priced at $1,595. Individual reports are available for $900. For more information, or to subscribe, please visit: www.heavyreading.com/entvoip.