While SIP trunking offers attractive cost savings and centralized management advantages over ISDN, ensuring that a service provider’s SIP solution works with your PBX infrastructure is critical. And with a proliferation of PBX platforms on the market — each with multiple versions – verification becomes a big challenge.

Vodafone Libertel is part of the Vodafone Group, one of the largest mobile telecommunications companies in the world with over 446 million mobile customers and 12 million customers in the fixed network. Operating in the Netherlands, Vodafone Libertel has over 5 million customers and 3500 employees.

Vodafone Libertel recognized that as the popularity of its SIP trunking service continued to grow it needed to ensure interoperability with the leading PBXs owned by its enterprise customers. The telecommunications company has certified its service on more than 150 PBX platforms over the years, but demand keeps increasing against a background of frequent updates to PBXs by manufacturers. Vodafone’s internal team was able to perform interoperability testing to verify its service would work on a particular PBX, but that often took weeks and sometimes months.

“In one case, we took six months to complete the testing,” said Roel Snoek, technical product manager for Vodafone Libertel. “Some prospective customers don’t wait around that long for the results and we lose an opportunity.”

Vodafone Libertel found itself playing catch-up, trying to keep up with demand to verify that its SIP trunking would work for its customers’ infrastructure. To keep pace and accelerate the verification process, Vodafone explored working with an outside testing lab.

“In addition to helping us meet the strong demand for validating our SIP trunking service for customers, there is something powerful about having third-party validation from an independent lab. It provides an even stronger assurance that our service will deliver the benefits the customer requires on the PBX platform they have,” said Snoek.

Vodafone Libertel evaluated three testing lab companies and ultimately selected tekVizion, based on its deep knowledge of the industry and testing expertise. SIP trunking interoperability testing is a core competency for tekVizion and the company is now helping Vodafone Libertel meet its verification needs to become more responsive to customers.

“With tekVizion, we are now proactively certifying PBXs to not only keep pace with customer demand, but also get ahead. We had been reactive in testing before. It sure is nice to go from defense to playing offense, which is exactly what tekVizion has helped us do,” Snoek added.

Just as interoperability testing is a core competency for tekVizion, its verification services allows Vodafone Libertel to focus on its own areas of expertise – optimizing communications services for its enterprise customers to improve productivity, cut costs and simplify management.

“We’ve been very impressed with Vodafone Libertel and its approach to rigorously verify its SIP trunking services for customers with third-party certification. This is a great example of how independent testing is a strategic part of delivering successful technology solutions,” said Chakra DeValla, CEO of tekVizion.

tekVizion works with major PBX vendors and leading service providers worldwide to accelerate SIP service deployments with reduced cost and improved customer satisfaction.

For more information go to www.tekvizion.com