Are you still stuck with your PRI lines?

July 11, 2024 by viva

PRI is a single physical line and it comes with 32 voice channels in India. Few things on it:

All the 32 voice channels can be used simultaneously
It has guaranteed Quality of Service as it uses circuit-switched model for its voice connections between end points

Well… it does most things I need and I am happy in my space. Why should I look at alternatives?

When you want to have 70 simultaneous voice calls, imagine what happens. You will have to buy two more PRI lines with 32 channels each.

PRI line requires a physical line to the company’s telephony system. The connection is enabled by an expensive PRI interface card on the telephony system.

Customers who use PRI lines have to generously purchase phone numbers. For instance, an organization with 70 phones will need 70 phone numbers from its telco to cover its maximum simultaneous-use needs. It works out to one phone number for every physical device. Add to this, the expensive PRI interface cards for every line in addition to the PRI line rentals.

In essence, PRI adds up to the cost of communication.

Are there any easier alternatives?

You should look at SIP trunks. SIP trunks operate using Internet Protocol and allows multiple simultaneous streams of VoIP calls to be routed through a carrier’s network and delivered to an organization as voice packets.

SIP trunks are software-centric that allows them to be far more flexible and scalable, which makes it convenient. Adding or reducing the number of calls a SIP trunk handles usually only takes a change in configuration.

For instance, if you want 70 people to use phones to make calls, all you need is a single SIP trunk to handle 70 or more simultaneous voice calls. You don’t need 70 phone numbers as a single number can be used.

Many a times, we come across organizations where they mention that their SIP calls aren’t of high quality. It is mainly because of the limitations in bandwidth and the fact that the bandwidth used for voice is shared with general Internet data. At times, it chokes and your voice calls don’t go through. In order to provide QoS, we bundle data along with the SIP trunking that doesn’t have Internet limitations.

We have helped more than 1000 customers with their SIP calling all over the world. We have provided and continue to manage even 3000 simultaneous voice calls for customers using SIP.

The savings on the multiple PRI lines, additional hardware needed, convenience and quality that SIP offers obviously puts voice communication in favor of SIP trunks.