Case Study: SIA Saves With SIP Trunking

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) is the premier trade association representing the U.S. semiconductor industry. Founded in 1977, SIA unites more than 60 companies that account for nearly 90 percent of the semiconductor production of the United States, including Intel, AMD, Micron Technology and Texas Instruments.

The Challenge. When relocating to the East Coast from the Bay Area, SIA had an opportunity to cut costs and expand phone features by switching from a traditional business phone system to VoIP. SIA had already purchased an on-premises Asterisk-based phone system, but still was in need of compatible VoIP phone services for the ability to communicate over IP not just within the organization, but also with the outside world.

In order to make full use of its installed IP PBX, SIA needed to partner with a SIP trunking provider to connect to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Unlike traditional telephony where physical wires are delivered from the service provider to a business, a SIP trunk allows a company to replace these traditional fixed lines with telephone connectivity via a SIP trunking service provider on the Internet. This enables the organization to reap the cost and convenience benefits of VoIP with new or their existing IP enabled phone equipment.

The challenge for SIA was doing so without introducing complications that would increase risk or put a burden on training and support. The organization was seeking a phone service partner they could rely on.

The Solution. On a recommendation, SIA selected TelCentris Inc., a San Diego-based VoIP service provider that operates its own telecom network in the cloud.

A business associate over at Ricoh, our office equipment supplier, mentioned TelCentris SIP trunk offerings. We checked out TelCentris solutions and felt there was a good fit,” said Jason Webb, network administrator at SIA.

After meeting with SIA, TelCentris created a package that addressed the clients remaining phone service needs, while also lowering costs. The package included 22 SIP trunks, a 4.5mbps T1 line, a managed router and 1,000 minutes of long-distance calling. Installation, provisioning and project management were included.

The Result. By switching to a TelCentris SIP trunking solution, SIA was able to cut costs and gain added convenience compared to using a traditional phone system.

SIA was also able to leverage a single data connection for both voice and data with available bandwidth dynamically allocated to the organizations needs. SIA no longer needed to purchase expensive T1 cards necessary for traditional phone systems but not IP-based phone solutions. These cards cover less than two dozen phone lines and typically cost $2,000 to $3,000 each.

SIA also was able to take advantage of VoIP calling rates, which are significantly less than traditional carrier rates. Businesses leveraging IP business phone systems, such as SIA, can expect to see 20-30 percent cost savings over traditional phone systems, if not more,” said Tad Nikolich, director of sales at TelCentris.

SIA also gained the ability to add or remove phone lines without incurring installation costs or buying additional equipment; equipping the organization with instant scalability whether its dropping down to five or expanding to 200 phone lines in a matter of just a couple of days.

In addition, TelCentris successfully addressed SIAs concerns about making the switch without introducing risk through its project management services. TelCentris provides customers access to a dedicated technician who guides the customer through the setup and implementation process as well as ongoing monitoring of service and network performance.

We saved a lot of time by having a single point of contact to answer questions regarding the installation, even ones outside of TelCentris scope of work,” said SIAs Webb. TelCentris worked synergistically with the phone vendor and the phone manufacturer to integrate all the elements into a robust business phone system.”

This cooperation helps to avoid complications and finger-pointing that can occur with multivendor installations.

We felt completely comfortable throughout the whole process. [The project manager] from TelCentris called almost daily to make sure things were going smoothly and on schedule,” added Webb.