SIP? What’s that?! VirtualPBX announced that we can send calls directly to a SIP-based VoIP service. But what does that really mean to you? While the official press release hits most of the big points, let’s quickly discuss the different options for receiving calls from your Virtual PBX service, as we don’t have to send calls directly to a phone number anymore.
Let’s start at the top. By default, VirtualPBX will take the inbound call to your local or toll-free VPBX number, puts the caller on hold, then dials out to find the extension owner at whatever phone number they want — home phone, cell phone, essentially anything with a phone number. However, you now have options.
There are VoIP services out there — CallCentric, Ekiga, and Truphone, just to name a few — that are very cost-effective and could actually take the place of your land line. Some of them will allow you to register a hardware VoIP phone to their service so you have a phone on your desk. A lot of these VoIP services are based on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), which is the standard protocol for sending calls over the internet. And through our VoIP Peering feature, Virtual PBX can send the call directly to your VoIP phone service, not by dialing a phone number, but rather through the internet back door using a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) which looks like an email address: [email protected]. Not all VoIP phone services provide a URI, so please check with your VoIP phone service provider.
Now all you have to do is put that SIP URI in the Call Routing page of your extension.
Why is this so cool? Firstly, a VoIP phone service could save you money each month by taking the place of your land line. Secondly, it makes our iVPBX plan even more flexible now that we can send a call to any SIP-based VoIP phone service provider. The iVPBX plan can potentially save you big money since you get a local phone number, five extensions, and upwards of 20,000 minutes built into the system as long as we send the call to a SIP-based VoIP phone service — all for $49.99/month!
With this new feature, Virtual PBX is now the most flexible — and most cost effective — virtual phone service in the market delivering calls to not just whatever phone number you want, but now to whatever SIP-based VoIP phone service you wish to use. That’s why Virtual PBX is so cool.
