It's hard not to see and appreciate the gains that session initiation protocol (SIP) trunking has made in the last several months, because even in just the last several days, it's had its share and then some. With plenty of new developments emerging in the field, it's easy to miss some of the biggest points, and that's where our Week in Review coverage comes in. With the weekend now afoot, we can take a step back and consider more fully the biggest news of the week, so settle in, and let's run it down.

First we had a look at Unicoi Systems, who put a little something extra in its Fusion Voice Engine platform. Included in the surprisingly substantial array of upgrades were support for the SILK Wideband system, Audio Statistics services for multiple channel operations, a better audio driver for iOS users and OSX users, and a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) geared toward setting the levels of DTMF tones as well as setting up encoder configuration settings before a channel is actually started.

Next, Unify (News - Alert) stepped in to offer up an award to Scottsdale, Arizona. Unify gave the city the New Way to Work Global Ambassador award thanks to Scottsdale's move to make its communications simpler with OpenScape voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) solutions. The use of OpenScape has reportedly made users better able to communicate with coworkers and the public, improving overall operations, and the city is said to be working to improve still further with its City Desk Top Anywhere concept, which puts necessary tools in users' hands regardless of location.

Gartner (News - Alert) weighed in next, offering up one of its Cool Vendor designations to OnSIP. OnSIP took the award in the unified communications (UC) category, and reportedly landed the award thanks to OnSIP's InstaPhone application, a Web-based real time communications (WebRTC) app that allowed users to create complete video sessions using Salesforce dashboards. InstaPhone also has several other Salesforce-related interactions like looking up customer records.

Then we had a look at Team on the Run's new offerings, as the company added both VoIP service and push-to-talk service to its mobile app. The addition of these two services allowed this app, which offers communications platforms for small businesses like hotels and repair firms, to better connect users regardless of current location. Whether in close proximity or farther apart, Team on the Run's mobile app is better able to connect without expensive phone bills.

Finally, to close out the week, we had a look at how a company can tell if it's a good time to deploy unified communications systems. There were six good ways to tell, ranging from if a VoIP plan is already in place to the geographic dispersal of company elements, and those who end up agreeing with a large portion of the list may want to look more closely at UC systems.

That was the week that was in SIP trunking, and it was clear that there was plenty going on. With new tools emerging and old tools getting some special highlighting, there was a lot to keep track of. Our global online community was right in the thick of it all, giving us the best in news to consider. So be sure to join us back here next week for all the latest in SIP trunking, and every weekend for our Week in Review coverage!