Is it possible to have two separate SIP trunk providers?

Hi everyone,

My business has a branch in Republic of ireland, and a branch in the UK (northern ireland)

Therefore we need both an ROI local number and a UK local number.

I have found a SIP trunk provider who provides trunks in the UK. I was going to buy a UK number off them, and port over our current ROI number. However, they said they use a UK telecomms company, so all calls made from us to ROI numbers would be classed as international and billed slightly extra. (even calls made from our ROI people, which is a bit crazy)

To avoid this I was wondering if I could route calls to the UK SIP trunk provider for the calls made by people in our UK branch, and then route calls with a different provider for our ROI branch

Has anyone done this before?

This is a fairly standard thing to do and why outbound routes exist.

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I was sort of thinking that. I know you can use dial patterns, so the people in ROI and in the UK can both be on the same FreePBX system, but if a UK number is dialled (e.g. 0203151****), then even the people in ROI would go through the UK sip trunk provider and made the call through that.

Same way, if an ROI number was dialled, it does not matter if it was the people in ROI or in the UK, it will use a ROI sip trunk provider.

I just thought it might be odd to have two separate sip trunk providers, like our current system (3CX) only uses one, although in fairness the current 3CX system was set up for just the ROI branch, the UK branch has only been built recently after that system was made.

If other people have done that before I will give it a go! Thanks

I just sort of thought it would be strange to get two bills/invoices every month, one from the UK company and one from irish company.

You might consider Voxbeam (a UK company) as part of your solution. My account with them is in USD, which I’ve used for the prices below. They use a ‘virtual PRI’ model – numbers are very inexpensive but incoming channels cost a lot. If you need only e.g. 4 incoming channels (outbound calls don’t count against that) you may find them quite attractive. With low-cost numbers, you could have each associate have his own number and be directly reachable without going through a receptionist or IVR.

Incoming channel: $11 setup + $6.60/month; channels are shared by all your numbers.
UK or IE number: $0.40 setup + $0.40/mo.
Inbound calls are free.
Outbound to IE: landline $0.0048/min.; mobiles $0.0060 to $0.0065/min., depending on operator.
Outbound to UK: landline $0.005/min.; major mobiles $0.0082 to $0.0094/min., depending on operator, though some specialty providers (Jersey, Guernsey, etc.) are very expensive.
All these calls are billed by the second, which for typical calling patterns is about 10% less than billing rounded up to next minute.

Unfortunately, I don’t believe that they offer emergency calling (999, 112, etc.) in either country, so you may need another provider for that. You also might consider getting numbers from another provider and using Voxbeam only for non-emergency outbound calls.

They offer a small credit at signup, so you can test quality without making a payment or providing any financial information.

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