SIP Trunking is a pretty busy area, here’s some recent news to catch you up.

TMC’s (News - Alert) Doug Mohney wrote that as the world starts to shift more rapidly from legacy TDM to an all-IP world, it is clear some companies in the IP communications business are taking a long term view to grow and thrive. Others seem to have taken a more stoic approach to growth, engaging in a strategy of acquisitions to increase revenues. It's not clear if there's a right answer for survival and success over the next five years.

Acme Packet (News - Alert) and Metaswitch Networks have a relatively clear picture of where they want to be in five years -- all the more ironic since the two are starting to part ways over Metaswitch's aggressive entry into the carrier SBC market. Both companies realize they need to diversify their revenue streams from reliance upon a single good product and have a portfolio of products to offer service providers.

Each plans to build businesses with a combination of organic growth supplemented by select acquisitions to fill in specific needs in a larger, consistent portfolio of offerings.   And everything in the portfolio will (should) play well together. Both will leverage their existing customer base and industry reputation to promote their vision.

TMC’s Anuradha Shukla noted that 4PSA has announced the public availability of Cloud Telephony, a flexible, next-generation SIP trunking service that delivers access to the telephony network using the SIP protocol and features unlimited concurrent incoming and outgoing calls.

The new service can be provisioned within minutes and allows users to choose local phone numbers in over 30 countries around the world with best rates for domestic and international calls.

One does not have to install physical phone lines to use this next-generation SIP trunking service and users can save money with free incoming calls.

4PSA is offering Cloud Telephony in three packages: Starter, Business and Service Provider. These packages offer free credit every month and do not require any commitments.

4PSA is an innovative software development company, specialized in applications that run on computer clouds. The company notes that this new service is part of its strategy to bring the cloud flexibility to resources that traditionally required complicated provisioning processes.

"The Cloud Telephony solution is designed to deliver great value to a wide variety of customers, from small businesses to enterprises and also service providers. We cover a wide range of expectations and requirements," said Mike Ross, 4PSA's president. "With the addition of Cloud Telephony to our VoipNow Cloud Instance and Unified Communications (News - Alert) suite, the go-to-market time for these services has been greatly reduced.”

And Anil Sharma reported that Appia Communications, a provider of managed communications and network services, unleashed the power of SIP by removing concurrent call limitations on its SIP trunking products.

"Call path restrictions do not adapt to customers' changing requirements," said Victor von Schlegell, president of Appia.

Schlegell said that customers need their phone services to support marketing campaigns, seasonal changes in workforce levels, cyclical call volumes, and so forth. SIP trunks should enable -- not limit -- customers as these demands arise.

"We continue to simplify our products to address our customers' needs," said Jason Ulm, vice president of channel sales at Appia.

Ulm said that customers get to decide how many concurrent calls to make -- as they need them -- for a consistent and predictable price.

Recently, Appia Communications announced the immediate availability of its new Appia, or Appia Cubed, hosted VoIP offering.