What SIP Provider do you use?

[Greg Fox]

What SIP provider do you use? Which provides the BEST performance and call quality.

(Including codec support and call quality overall)

I am doing a demo on SIPTRUNK.COM which seems good, but there are a few minor quality issues. They only support G.711 and G729.

We have Fiber so not too concerned about bandwidth usage (Last speedtest reported 300/down), just looking for suggestions on handsdown best quality SIP provider.

Do you stick with larger names like AT&T or go to the smaller companies out there?

We have a private DataCenter and are moving into reselling PBX systems. We want to go with a company who can provide best quality calls for our clients.

 

[NTB Inc]

In my experience the bigger names like AT&T treat SIP trunks as a delivery method not a cost savings one. We do a lot with AT&T IP Flex and their enterprise voice services and the costs are usually similar whether the service is delivered via SIP or PRI from the router. We tend to find we have to review "internet" SIP providers to see cost savings.

I would examine your peering partners at your data center, with our colo provider they have 4 SIP providers that are "on-net" with them meaning we have a bit better predictability with call quality and some recourse should we have quality issues vs just commodity internet-based SIP trunking. I also like the "managed" SIP services like NexVortex has (https://www.nexvortex.com/msip-service) where they install customer-side equipment and either do data center peering back to them "on-net" OR install MPLS to provide the service. This gives them some control/insight into possible issues and some ability to work with provider to correct. In the internet trunking space there is a lack of control/ability to fix issues between you and them and thus can't count on the call quality and/or resolution if issues occur.

Personally I like the "hybrid" model: some PRI/traditional voice services AND some SIP trunks. In our industry being able to reach Operations and Customer Service is critical to our 24/7 company so we can't really rely on 1 provider solely. We actually publish 2 800 numbers to our staff, one is provided by one carrier and the other a totally separate carrier. When some of the recent AT&T/Level 3 outages happened we lost access to one of the 800s but not the other so we kept in business. What I've seen in the past is even some of the "DR/emergency" access services folks like NexVortex provide won't work to redirect your numbers, again depending on the severity of the issue, if its not last mile outage but something with their core backbone. These kinds of unknowns are why I prefer 2 separate carriers and 2 separate delivery methods (PRI/SIP). A lot of this will depend upon your clients and their needs, some can't justify expense/complexity of this setup but others can. If you are going to be providing/reselling PBX it would be beneficial for your sales pitch to have the redundancy/survivability piece built into the solution.

We have done testing with Flowroute, Nexvortex and OnSIP. When things are working right these providers are pretty close, they all have had their fair share of service down issues over the years and a somewhat concerning response during so that is why we really decided to implement a redundant call path from them. The traditional services complement their services nicely.

 

[Greg Fox]

Thanks for the in-depth response. Much appreciated.

I am looking into our colo now to see if they offer any service. I didn't even think about that option.

 

[NTB Inc]

Yeah this is the best case. Sometimes even if the provider themselves doesn't offer SIP trunking they will have another provider that is "on-net" that can. Our current colo provider has some large peering in major markets that allows us to hop on and hop off with other SIP providers easily but stay all on their private backbone and not hit commodity internet. The "cadillac" solution is of course private MPLS direct to provider but that is expensive and not flexible, the "on-net" peering is a happy medium between MPLS circuit and commodity internet. If we do have issues I can at least get colo provider who owns net and the SIP provider on a conference call and they can work together since there is common use there.

My only major complaint with internet SIP trunking is the lack of accountability when it comes to performance/routing issues between you and them. If there is network congestion or other issues you can easily have voice issues and no easy way to rectify them. In an enterprise that's 24/7 not being able to fix issues quickly isn't really an option. With that said though, there are some serious flexibility/cost benefits to SIP trunking but having a backup plan when network conditions aren't good is key I think. In the case of NexVortex one time were testing and they were having issues so we easily went back to using our AT&T IP Flex voice services with no issues vs. if that was our only path we would have been in trouble.

 

[StefanW]

In general I would add some other general considerations when selecting a VoIP Provider

1. Register over Peering
   (This allows you to move the PBX to a new public IP without the need to alter at the provider side the IP)
2. Internet Line Independent
   (Best would be to select SIP trunks witch do not need to be on the same DSL line as the service provider and acts without any drop in SBCs in your network. In this way you gain full flex in moving the PBX in the cloud and back as you wish. On the other hand DSL and SIP from the same provider can guarantee QOS)
3. Management Portal
   (goes very much with point 1, if the only source of managing your SIP Trunks via communicating via eMail with the provider downtime may occurs until service are updated to your needs)