Our intent for this post is to provide what we believe is a guide to the best Business Practice to migrate your existing telephone lines to SIP Lines (also referred to as Channels, Trunks, Lines or Services).
When considering this type of migration for your voice services, system downtime and voice service downtime are Business Critical issues that need to be managed very closely.
We have found over the years of migrating customers to SIP that it is best completed within 4 main stages.
Step 1)
- Complete a Site Inspection to discover any items that may not be ready for the migration i.e. capability of the existing Phone System, Internal Data Network and external network Carriage (public or private). You may wish to read this post to gain better insight to your existing phone systems options for SIP migration.
- Once and understanding of what is required to connect the new SIP services, liaise with the people who currently support your existing phone system to organise the new SIP lines. We suggest connecting at least two SIP lines that will present your main advertised telephone number when outgoing calls are made. Most SIP providers can do this.
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Step 2)
- Our assumption at this point is you have already verified that your existing phone system can support the necessary quantity of SIP lines that you require and the network is at an acceptable level for the test.
- These two SIP Lines will be sufficient to ‘test’ your existing internal data network, router and your existing service provider.
- Your Telephone Support Company should have liaised with your existing data support group to ensure the internal network is ok for voice usage. This is a mission critical area as without collaboration between voice and data groups there is a strong potential for lengthy troubleshooting hours = $$$.
- If you do not have a quality Data Support Group then a good Voice Company would have the capability to program your Switches and Routers or at least have the name a company that can assist.
- Connect the two SIP lines and setup the system to use these lines as ‘first choice’ for outbound calls and use for a period of approx. 2 weeks.
- During this time any deficiencies in the quality of calls will quickly surface, typically they are found within the first few days.
- The Voice and/or Data groups will need to identify fault(s) then rectify. After fault rectification it would be best to restart the 2 week test period.
- Depending on the voice quality and additional quantity of services required it may also be necessary to consider a DEDICATED NBN Service just for your Voice Services.
- In large installations it may even be necessary to have 2 x Fibre connections, one for the data and one for the voice.
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Step 3)
- Once everyone is happy with the performance of the SIP services, arrange for the Porting of you existing numbers to the new carrier.
Step 4)
- On the date of the Porting, the Telephone Technicians will need to attend site and assist with the Porting and make adjustments to the Phone System as necessary. The old services are disconnected by the outgoing carrier.