SIP trunks, from the people who also answer for the phone system

What is a SIP trunk?

An older phone system connects to the outside world through physical lines, one call per pair of wires. A SIP trunk does the same job in software. Your phone system registers with the carrier over the internet, and calls in and out travel as data. Your phone numbers ride on the trunk, and how many calls you can carry at once is set by the trunk rather than by how many lines were pulled into the building.

What that means in practice: no copper to maintain, numbers that move with you when you change offices, and capacity that changes without anyone pulling new wire.

Certified, and what that means

Yeastar publishes a list of SIP trunk providers it has certified for Canada. Ours is on it, under the Heliatel certification lineage, listed as HeliaTel Premium. Certification means the trunk has been tested against the Yeastar system for registration, inbound and outbound calling, touch-tones and codecs, and that it appears in the system’s trunk setup with its settings filled in.

It doesn’t say anything about a provider’s network, support or price, and we won’t pretend it does. If you’re comparing Canadian SIP trunk providers, certification is a reasonable starting point, not the whole answer. The full list, and what certification covers, is in our article on Yeastar-certified SIP trunks in Canada.

Who buys them

Businesses keeping their own system

If you have a Yeastar P-Series, or a system you’re not ready to replace, our trunks replace the carrier behind it. We configure the trunk, port your numbers, and test the calls, 911 included.

Customers on our service agreements

Both of our service agreements require our SIP trunks. That isn’t an upsell. When a third-party carrier sits in the call path, there’s a part of it we can’t see, and a fault there turns into three companies on a call at 3 a.m. With our trunks, one party is responsible for the system, the trunk and the circuits, and there’s nobody to point at.

If you want to keep your own carrier, we’ll still write an agreement. It’s priced differently, and we’ll be honest about what we can’t see.

Our hosted service, Tribe, runs on our trunks for the same reason.

Partners and wholesale

We also sell trunks wholesale, to carriers and other partners who need a dependable Canadian trunk under their own service. If that’s you, call and ask for a technical conversation. We’ll be specific about what we deliver and plain about what we don’t.

911 on a SIP trunk

On a SIP trunk, what the dispatcher sees depends on the address registered against each number and on how the phone system is configured. Certification doesn’t cover it. We configure the system for it and test emergency calling regardless of whose trunk you’re on.

If you’re not sure what a 911 call from your building tells the dispatcher today, that’s one of the questions the Telephony Health Check answers.

Frequently asked questions

What is a SIP trunk, in one sentence?

It’s your phone system’s connection to the public phone network, carried over the internet instead of physical phone lines.

Do I need a Yeastar system to use your trunks?

Our trunks are certified on Yeastar, and that’s where we know them best. If you run something else, call us and we’ll tell you plainly whether we’ll support it.

Can we keep our numbers?

Yes, with a letter of authorisation. The losing carrier sets the timing, and we plan the cutover around it.

Our current provider isn’t on Yeastar’s certified list. Do we have to change?

No. A trunk that isn’t certified can work perfectly well once it’s configured by hand and tested. If you want one of our service agreements, it’s priced differently with a third-party carrier.

Is HeliaTel Premium you?

Yes. It’s the name our trunks carry on Yeastar’s certified list for Canada, and it describes the certification lineage, not a separate company. Your contract, your invoice and your support all come from North Star Telecom.