Suzanne: What are the top 5 key buzz terms in open source, unified, real-time and Internet communications that readers need to understand in 2017?

Dave: CPaaS
WebRTC
UCaaS
BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)
BYOC (Be Your Own Carrier)

Suzanne: How is Telnyx taking the lead in any of those areas?

Dave: As a next-generation provider, Telnyx has been leading the way when it comes to CPaaS and UCaaS, and it’s great to see these terms gaining traction within the industry. Having a cloud communications platform built on top of our own API gives users the ability to pull out any features they see in the portal, allowing them to leverage our APIs to embed voice in their own environments across a number of devices. This allows their clients to truly have a unified communications experience.

Another buzz term you’ll continue to see this year is WebRTC, which is something we support, as well. We offer a client for users to implement WebRTC into their own browser-based applications, and we will continue to release additional clients and SDK around functionality.

Due to companies like Telnyx that can support encryption and enable embedded communication, we’ve helped move the pendulum into the more application-centric environment, moving away from hardware (device-centric). Our Mission Control cloud communications platform, enables a BYOC model, providing independence for a lot of organizations to control their telephony environment. In turn, solutions providers are now able to support any device - BYOD - while still delivering quality and secure communications.

Suzanne: Telnyx connects over 8 billion devices in a world of approximately 7.5 billion population where of those that have mobile devices and the average is 2.9 devices person. Even I usually either have a smartphone and a tablet or a smartphone and a laptop with me at all times. What I am getting at it is that Telnyx serves customers all over the world, not just in USA and Canada ... and it is not a small guy. Tell us about your \"Be Their Own Carrier®\" through Telnyx innovative multi-tenant Mission Control Portal and RESTful API.\"

Dave: The Telnyx Mission Control Portal and API empowers managed service providers to Be Their Own Carrier® by enabling them to instantly provision and configure carrier services around the world. Everything from submitting port requests and building SIP trunks to making routing changes and adding features like E911 or CNAM can be done instantaneously within our cloud communications platform. Whether your clients are adding new offices in the US or expanding into the European market, Telnyx gives you the power to activate new local numbers on the fly and connect calls across the globe.

In addition, the Mission Control platform was specifically designed to support and enhance multi-tenant environments. By leveraging our connections and tagging feature, you can easily segregate your customers for easier management of your services. You also have the ability to generate reports by customer.

The Mission Control platform is built on top of our public facing-API - everything you can do in the portal can be done via our API. This means that not only can MSPs Be Their Own Carrier® but so too can application providers. Hosted phone systems, call tracking solutions and all sorts of applications can automate and embed communications within their platform. There’s no need to house your own inventory or try and build your own connectivity to the PSTN, you can simply leverage our API (or SDKs) to offer communications directly in your own application.

Suzanne: A good quality sip trunking and direct inward dialing service are a key components in a business's path to success. Each company really depends upon its service provider. DIDs have often been said to be going, going, gone soon, but with so many IoT, verification, marketing, and other business enabling services increasingly dependent upon the voice call and the text as methods of data sharing, customer updates, identity verification and more...not any time soon gone. What makes the best SIP trunking solution, and why, in your opinion is the DID still a necessity?

Dave: Evaluating a SIP trunking provider comes down to two main items: the quality of the voice and the usability of the platform. Of course, the provider’s support and cost structure are going to be important, but they aren’t worth taking into consideration if the carrier cannot offer the functionality you need while delivering a quality voice connection.

There are two major considerations that can impact the quality of the phone call. The first are the interconnections your carrier has in place. When you place a call through your provider, are they terminating the call over a direct interconnection with the carrier of the dialed number? Or, are they sending the call through some aggregator that, in turn, sends it through another aggregator and so on? You want to make sure that your SIP trunking provider has tier-1 interconnects and terminates your calls directly rather than going through some aggregator because it’s cheap.

The second consideration is the network and infrastructure that your provider has in place. The internet wasn’t designed for Real-Time Communications and therefore, VoIP is vulnerable to the latency, jitter and packet loss that occurs on the public internet. Quality SIP trunking demands that your provider take measures to combat these risks. In many cases, a VoIP provider will deploy servers in multiple data centers and allow their customers to route calls to the closest server. This can help to reduce latency but does not address the potential jitter and packet loss. In order to address jitter and packet loss, your SIP trunk provider needs to have its own private network to carry the traffic themselves and eliminate the public internet where possible.

Suzanne: Telnyx has sponsored several must-attend IP communications and technologies events in the past year or so such as ITEXPO, Asterisk World, All About the API, Channel Partners, Cluecon, Enterprise Connect and next... OpenSIPs Summit in Amsterdam May 2-5. This will be our DIDX.net team's first time to participate in OpenSIPs Summit 2017. We have many good reasons for doing so. Why has Telnyx chosen OpenSIPs Summit?

Dave: Our two main goals at these events are always to learn and to engage. We want to see how our industry is evolving with new trends and technology, we want to stay up-to-date, and we want to know what’s out there - we don’t want to get stuck in our own bubble. These events are also a great way to engage and meet new people, show who we are as a company, our technology and how we can help organizations, and really just spread the gospel - this idea of democratizing the PSTN and being your own carrier.

Suzanne: Which social networks can readers follow and interact with Telnyx?

Dave: Follow us on twitter @telnyx, like us on Facebook facebook.com/Telnyx/ and LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/telnyx