Infonetics: Businesses are turning to SIP trunking, but TDM trunks aren't going away

SIP trunking may be a nascent player in the enterprise communications market that still predominantly uses T1 and TDM-based voice trunking, but a new Infonetics survey revealed that 43 percent of business user respondents are leveraging SIP trunking at some point in their network.

What's driving the use of SIP trunking is its overall flexibility in terms of making moves, ads and changes and easier network infrastructure upgrades.

Despite the promise that SIP trunking has over TDM-based trunking technology, legacy TDM-based T1 circuits aren't going away in the near future. In fact, Infonetics believes T1 trunks will continue to be used through 2013.

Diane Myers, directing analyst for VoIP and IMS at Infonetics Research, said that businesses are taking a migratory approach to adopting SIP trunking, adding that the adoption of SIP trunking is facilitating 70 percent growth of enterprise session border controllers (SBC).

Businesses are "using SIP trunks in some capacity, although they are not completely displacing PSTN connections," she said. "All indications show that as businesses upgrade their voice infrastructure, they are making the move to SIP trunking, which will continue to drive growth of enterprise SBCs."

Given that SIP trunking is still a growing market, businesses have a wide choice of players that includes five main segments: large incumbent players including AT&T (NYSE: T), Sprint (NYSE: S) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ); large independents like CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) and Windstream (Nasdaq: WIN); cable operators including Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA), Cox and Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC); competitive players like PAETEC (Nasdaq: PAET); and other over-the-top (OTT) providers.

Infonetics SIP trunking

Infonetics SBC chart

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