Tips for deploying extensions on slow/intermittent internet connections?

Greetings,

I am working on extending our PBX system out to several remote locations some of which use WiMAX and VSAT connections which are spotty (packet loss, dropouts etc). I know that there aren’t any magic tricks but I’m wondering what can be done to try to get the most reliable performance in these scenarios. Ideally we are routing the SIP traffic “internally” through our Cisco Meraki VPN tunnel to these sites, but I fear that this might inflating the packet sizes and causing more packets to be dropped, so I’m considering switching the SIP to using encryption and wondering if this will help. Encryption is a requirement.

Currently we are using cheap phones, Yealink T-20P.

Thank you