What is a SIP service provider?

First, let’s address SIP: Session Initiation Protocol is the de facto standard protocol for establishing, conducting and ending a VoIP call. If you are really interested in technical details, check the Wikipedia entry on SIP or our dedicated section to SIP for the condensed version.

SIP is to VoIP as SMTP is to E-mail. Just like the standard protocol, SMTP, which allows two email servers to exchange email data, SIP allows two endpoints (IP Phones) to connect to one another using a standard protocol. Without such a standard, two phones would not share a common set of instructions and guidelines in order to properly exchange packetized voice.

The great thing about SIP is that it promises to help do away with phone numbers all together. How? Imagine your email address could be “dialed” from a phone and it would kick off a call. Further, imagine everyone at your company is reachable by phone using email addresses. My name is Robert. It would be great if people could reach me by dialing Robert@xxxxxx rather than some random collection of digits, which have no meaning.

Think of SIP as the protocol for yet another service capability of a domain:

Email: SMTP
Web: HTTP
Voice: SIP
Video: SIP

OnSIP is a SIP service provider. With an OnSIP account, you can open your domain to SIP traffic. This will allow you and your team members to be reached by phone using email address too!

You can make and receive SIP calls to/from any SIP address. Calls to users on our network, since they are all SIP calls, are all free.

Check out our SIP Domain Features for more info.