Speakeasy Adds VoEthernet, SIP Trunking

Speakeasy launched two new integrated access products – voice over Ethernet and SIP trunking – at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo.

Speakeasy President and CEO Bruce Chatterly said the voice-over-Ethernet offer is a follow on to rollouts of symmetrical Ethernet in 3, 5 and 10mbps last year. Now, the company offers voice over these Ethernet connections as well as over T1 and ADSL2. The package combines voice, data, local calling and long distance over a single circuit and can save customers up to 45 percent over traditional phone service. Costs for the 3, 5 and 10mbps services are $680, $1,400 and $1,580, respectively.

Calls between locations using Speakeasy Voice are free, creating another cost saving idea for multilocation businesses. Speakeasy also offers long distance calling plans at less than two cents per minutes. Unused minutes can be carried forward to the next month.

Chatterly said VoEthernet offers major cost advantages to companies with high-bandwidth needs that can’t make VoIP work over lower bandwidth options like T1s. With a T1, he explained, it’s easy to use up all the bandwidth for voice. But with a 3mbps Ethernet connection, for example, companies can have 16 simultaneous calls and 2.5MB left for data. At 5mbps and 24 simultaneous calls, there 2.4mbps left for data. And, at 10mbps, you can have 36 simultaneous calls and 8.9mbps left for data.

As a company’s needs grow, Chatterly said it has the ability to migrate to a faster service with no new equipment required.

Speakeasy is able to integrate voice and data service through analog lines, digital lines and/or directly to IP PBX systems through its new direct SIP capability, also announced this week.

To support direct SIP, Speakeasy plans to certify eight of the major IP PBX hardware manufacturers. Speakeasy has certified the ADTRAN Netvanta 7100 and Fonality trixbox Community Edition (CE). The SIP service also works with Speakeasy Hosted Voice.

Chatterly said a multilocation business could use different integrated voice options at each of its locations and put them under one Speakeasy calling plan.

“We try to make it easy to take advantage of VoIP regardless of the technology they have,” Chatterly said.