TalkTalk Business has unveiled its new SIP offering following the acquisition of UK-based channel-only SIP and hosted carrier Tipicall.
TalkTalk Business completed its acquisition of Tipical in April this year for an undisclosed sum, with Tipicall’s senior management forming form the core team driving the new SIP trunking business.
The new proposition will see TalkTalk Business offering free SIP trunking with on-net data, competitive voice rates and connectivity pricing. It added that channel partners would be able to scale contracts up or down on a monthly basis.
It says partners would only need to deal with one carrier responsible for the end-to-end service, one account manager for all their voice and data queries, and access to Tipicall’s, purpose-built provisioning, management and support portals. The service also offers free fraud mitigation and DR services as well as dedicated sales and operational training, testing and on-boarding.
Charles Bligh, managing director at TalkTalk Business, says the last five years have seen the firm building its data credentials off the back of its next generation network. “Our data business has grown 40 to 50 percent a year. 3,000 exchanges; it's the biggest network, even bigger than BT,” he tells Channel Pro.
“The next logical step to this was to provide SIP or voice over our data because what happens at the moment is the channel takes our data and then they’ll go to BT or whoever and get SIP and the voice and they have to go to two partners to do that,and it is more expensive, it results in issues in terms of who’s responsible,” says Bligh (pictured).
He says the end-to-end product “could easily be 30 percent less cost to the channel as a result of this”.
He adds: “If all of that adds up to £6,000 a year with voice, SIP and Ethernet it will probably be about 30 percent cheaper as a result of us now entering the market.”
Bligh says that by dropping the price point for next generation voice in the channel, it will have two effects. “One is that the channel can make more margins. Second, some of this will be passed through to the end market which will create more demand.”
TalkTalk said that it already carries more than 16bn SIP minutes per annum, and with the market growing by 30 percent a year, there is a “huge opportunity for channel partners to take advantage and maximise their revenue potential, especially as the switch-off of traditional voice in 2025 approaches, whilst ensuring an enhanced experience for their own customers.”
Speaking about BT, Bligh says: “They have no incentive to really drive this market because they are the biggest legacy carrier. I don't have a lot of legacy so I have an incentive to be disruptive. This is a big deal for the channel.”
