ties, but the basics of telephony will always be about communications. Chapter 2 Trends in IP Telephony This chapter covers the following topics: Major trends in IP communications Enterprise IP communications endpoints Endpoint trends in enterprises and their effects on SIP trunk Feature trends in SIP trunking within the enterprise Feature trends in SIP trunking between enterprises Feature trends in SIP trunk for PSTN access Feature trends in advanced SIP trunking features from service providers Feature trends for call center services from SIP trunk providers Internet Protocol (IP) telephony has become a widespread and standard means of commu- nication. Prior to 2000, IP telephony was the choice of only a select few. Now, in 2010, more and more people and businesses are adopting Voice over IP (VoIP) solutions. In many areas VoIP solutions is the dominant method of communications. In large-scale business telephony solutions, the transition is almost complete with the vast majority of all new telecommunications installations utilizing IP telephony. As the demand for IP telephony has increased, the number of vendors, implementers, and providers in this field has also increased, and this trend is expected to continue. The heavy competition prevalent in the IP telephony market has resulted in the greatest bene- fits for consumers. Competition has driven service providers (SP) to slash their prices and offer a wide range of features. Aggressive competition has also lead to major reductions in costs from equipment providers. Finally, there has been an explosion in capabilities of IP telephony and the term Unified Communications (UC) has been adopted to include the expansion of all these services to include voice, voice mail, video, email, faxes, SMS, and just about any other type of communications that can be coupled with IP telephony. 12 SIP Trunking Per the laws of economics, the increases in IP telephony usage have brought down prices and increased choice to the consumers. There is also a major technological trend to