VoIP T1 Signaling

[damacus]

Can anyone give me a rough idea of how much more expensive it is, overall, to implement SS7 instead of PRI for a new installation needing about 46 circuits?

My knowledge of SS7 is a bit limited, but from what I understand it requires a bit of extra gear that tends to be pricy, and that it can use a full T1 for signalling.. but does it require a full DS1 of bandwidth? I did read somewhere that in spite of added equipment costs that SS7 service can be cheaper to provision and cheaper per month than PRI.

Just kinda curious if it's worth it. Direct SMS would be useful, and SS7 does sound like the bees knees, but I'm not sure if the cost / technical overhead of it should preclude me from spending the time investigating it further. From all I've heard so far, it's expensive and supporting it is more involved technically.

Input muc[h] appreciated!

 

[athlon1.2]

SS7 is used in "carrier network" and generally is not deployed to the end user. So you have your PBX and you want to utilmataly connect it to your 46 voice channels, you will need a PRI interface at your SS7 device.

Unless you have a compelling reason not to use PRI, I would use PRI. It's pretty standardized and supported in all modern phone systems.

 

[damacus]

SS7 is used in "carrier network" and generally is not deployed to the end user. So you have your PBX and you want to utilmataly connect it to your 46 voice channels, you will need a PRI interface at your SS7 device.

For sure, most everything out there seems to infer carrier services. It's definitely less common, but I believe SS7 to the end-user is happening out there. I did see on AT&T's page here that if you already have ANC you can add SS7 to your service, with the presumption, I'm sure, that you have SS7 equipment to run the SS7 end-to-end. Or at least to the demarcation point. I don't know from there once you bring SS7 in, if you'd then feed a PRI link from that over something like a VWIC into a regular PBX or what.

Unless you have a compelling reason not to use PRI, I would use PRI. It's pretty standardized and supported in all modern phone systems.

So far, that's what I've been planning on. Probably will continue with that, and just use Twilio for SMS. I want to investigate SS7 now regardless while I'm still pre-deploy, just to rule it out before hardware is purchased and contracts are signed.

 

[PigLover]

Can anyone give me a rough idea of how much more expensive it is, overall, to implement SS7 instead of PRI for a new installation needing about 46 circuits?

My knowledge of SS7 is a bit limited, but from what I understand it requires a bit of extra gear that tends to be pricy, and that it can use a full T1 for signalling.. but does it require a full DS1 of bandwidth? I did read somewhere that in spite of added equipment costs that SS7 service can be cheaper to provision and cheaper per month than PRI.

Just kinda curious if it's worth it. Direct SMS would be useful, and SS7 does sound like the bees knees, but I'm not sure if the cost / technical overhead of it should preclude me from spending the time investigating it further. From all I've heard so far, it's expensive and supporting it is more involved technically.

Input muc[h] appreciated!

IF you can even get a carrier to offer you direct SS7 (highly unlikely) you'd find that it is almost infinitely more expensive - not literally, but it will feel that way when you see the cost, both of the equipment and the services.

AT&Ts SS7 offering that you refer to is offered to other carriers, not consumers or business. Unless you are ready to strike a 251/252 inter-carrier transport agreement with them then this offering is not available to you. Note that the legal fees alone for the 251/252 agreement will cost you at least a $hundred $grand. And it only provides ISUP, LIDB and a couple of other AIN services - you don't get GSM-MAP from it which is what you need in order to do "direct SMS".

Stick with PRI. It was designed from the ground up to give a PBX presentation of ISUP and other network signalling.

Frankly in the current market i wouldn't be doing T1 at all - you should be looking at SIP/VoIP base solutions. But that is another discussion.

 

[damacus]

Hah, wow. Serious business. Thanks for the information - really appreciate it.

Frankly in the current market i wouldn't be doing T1 at all - you should be looking at SIP/VoIP base solutions. But that is another discussion.

I'd consider SIP for primary termination / origination if it were over a private leased line from a carrier, but with overhead, SIP takes something like 80-85kbps, so I'd get more capacity from just using PRI. The main reason I intend to use T1s is for reliability. Cost-wise we're going to save bundles even with the PRIs just because we have so many sites that currently use old lone-PBX boxen with their slew of lines. (The architecture predates my employ.)

We'll be able to watch the SIP trunking market evolve over the next 3-5 years, and in the meantime can always set up SIP trunks for excess capacity or to handle new DIDs for specific application, and also simply to test the waters.

 

[calvinj]

Frankly in the current market i wouldn't be doing T1 at all - you should be looking at SIP/VoIP base solutions. But that is another discussion.

I like the idea of doing SIP/VOIP solutions as well, but depending on where your at you might be confined to using a PRI and at a premium price too..