Technical Solutions, an industry leader in unified communications, has begun to inform their customers on the Federal Communications Commission decision to raise the Universal Service Fund fee levied on interstate and international calls. According to a public notice released by the FCC, the increase will be a record 14.1% for the first quarter of 2010. Technical Solutions is placing special emphasis on helping businesses avoid these substantial costs through Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Trunking.

“The popularity of SIP Trunking has exploded and has rapidly become the transport of choice for voice communications,” commented Gene Wells, President of Technical Solutions. “With the current economic environment the last thing most businesses need is an increase in their telecom costs. SIP technology empowers companies to reduce cost and improve productivity through advanced business applications. Through the implementation of SIP, new technology costs most companies absolutely nothing.”

SIP technology supports any form of real-time communication regardless of whether the content is voice, video, instant messaging, or a collaboration application. SIP enhances employee productivity by enabling users to inform others of their status (also known as presence management), their availability, and how they can be contacted before a communication is even initiated.

SIP Trunking improves the bottom line of companies combining their voice and data services onto a SIP-based Trunk rather than using a costly primary rate interface (PRI) or T-1. SIP lets organizations converge their traffic onto a single line allowing them to see how they can best utilize or reduce bandwidth.

Another telltale sign driving the demand for SIP technology is a statement made recently by AT&T telling U.S. telecom regulators that it should set plans for phasing out older telephone networks if the government wants to make high-speed Internet access available across the country. AT&T stated that the government's goal of 100% broadband Internet access is in reach only if resources are moved away from "plain-old telephone service", known in the industry as POTS and the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). AT&T described circuit switched telephone systems as relics of a bygone era.

“A few years ago SIP was considered bleeding edge technology. Today it’s considered cutting edge and tomorrow it will be mainstream. During SIP’s infancy we conducted our own testing so we could properly position and deploy it to our customers when the time was right. Well, the time is right and those that have decided to adopt it are reaping its many benefits and are truly giving themselves an advantage against their competition,” added Wells.

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