In many cases, PRI and SIP trunking serve the same purpose: They enable simultaneous calls over a line, but their features and characteristics are very different. Let’s take a look at a few of the major differences between PRI and SIP trunking.
What Is PRI Phone Connection?
PRI is a single physical line, often a T1 connection in North America or an E1 in Europe. A T1 has a total of 23 voice channels, and an E1 has a total of 32 voice channels, all of which can be used simultaneously. In addition, PRI uses a circuit-switched model for its voice connections between endpoints and has guaranteed quality of service (QoS).
Since a PRI connection uses an actual physical line, it requires a physical connection to connect to the company’s telephony system. This connection commonly comes in the form of an expensive PRI interface card on the telephony system.
How Many PRI Phone Numbers Are Needed?
Furthermore, companies with PRI phones usually need to purchase a generous amount of PRI phone numbers that are then assigned to their internal departments, call centers and personnel. As a result, a company with 92 phones would probably purchase 92 PRI phone numbers from its telecommunications provider to cover its maximum simultaneous-use needs (one phone number for every physical device).
Since one PRI phone line (T1) will only allow up to 23 simultaneous calls, if the company needs to have all 92 phone lines available for calls at one time, it needs to purchase four PRI lines, which means an increase in PRI line rentals, plus the hardware needed to connect, or interface, the line with the telephony system. This is often a problem for call centers, where increasing the capacity of simultaneous phone calls translates into big costs.
PRI Trunks vs. SIP Trunking
In contrast to PRI, SIP trunking is a virtual connection to the PSTN. This virtual connection runs on top of a data connection (like the Internet) that typically already exists in an organization. This makes SIP trunking easier to install. SIP trunks use a packet-switched networking model that terminates to the service provider via IP and is typically a best-effort delivery with no QoS guarantees, whereas there is no virtual PRI solution.
While businesses opt for running SIP trunks directly over the Internet, telecommunications providers prefer to offer dedicated data lines directly to a customer’s premises to ensure the quality and stability of their SIP trunks.
The capacity of a SIP trunk is related only to the capacity the service provider can handle and the bandwidth available on the data line between the customer and service provider.
Going back to our previous example, if the same company decided to switch its PRI phone lines to SIP trunks, it would then require only one SIP trunk to handle all 92 simultaneous calls, assuming there is enough bandwidth in the line between the company and service provider. The savings on the multiple PRI connection lines and additional hardware (interface cards) needed obviously warrants careful consideration for any organization.
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