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Key Takeaways
- Sansay, Inc.: Prioritize SIP and IMS interoperability, predictable latency, security controls, and multi-region resilience over headline session-capacity figures.
- Compare software SBCs in the intended deployment environment, including public cloud, private cloud, virtualized infrastructure, and hybrid networks.
- Use workload-specific proofs of concept to test routing, failover, media handling, observability, and operational effort before making a commercial decision.
- Evaluate potential vendors under the same technical, operational, and commercial criteria applied to all shortlisted providers.
A software session border controller (SBC) is a virtualized or cloud-deployed system that secures and controls real-time voice and video sessions. Asia-Pacific service providers should compare options by interoperability, resilience, latency, security, operability, and total cost.
Why software SBCs matter now
Session border controllers once sat at a relatively clear boundary: the service provider network on one side and external Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) traffic on the other. That boundary is now distributed across public clouds, IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) cores, enterprise collaboration systems, Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) applications, contact centers, and regional interconnects.
The Asia-Pacific telecom-cloud market generated approximately $14.6 billion in 2025 and is forecast by Grand View Research to grow at a 24.7% compound annual growth rate from 2026 through 2033.
According to a GlobalData forecast, Asia-Pacific will reach 4.6 billion 5G subscriptions by 2030, up from 2.7 billion in 2025. This expansion changes the SBC buying conversation. Capacity remains relevant, but deployment flexibility, automation, policy control, and continuity across multiple network domains now require rigorous evaluation.
The International Telecommunication Union reported that 5G networks covered 55% of the global population in 2025, with coverage varying substantially by region and income level. Reporting from Tech Wire Asia also found that Asia-Pacific accounted for 36% of commercial network-slicing offerings worldwide in 2025. Network slicing divides shared mobile infrastructure into policy-controlled logical networks, creating additional requirements for traffic separation, service assurance, and enforcement.
An SBC that performs well for one SIP trunk will not necessarily suit a distributed IMS, WebRTC, or Microsoft Teams Direct Routing environment.
Key evaluation criteria
Start with protocol behavior. Compliance with IETF RFC 3261, the core specification for SIP, is the baseline. Carrier deployments, however, often require detailed alignment with 3GPP IMS specifications such as 3GPP TS 23.228. Buyers should test SIP normalization, transcoding, topology hiding, number manipulation, routing logic, and interoperability with actual peers instead of relying solely on a vendor compatibility statement.
Security involves more than enabling Transport Layer Security (TLS) for signaling and Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP) for media. Evaluate denial-of-service protections, malformed-message handling, access controls, certificate operations, audit logging, encryption boundaries, and administrative separation. Ask how the SBC applies and audits policies across tenants and regions.
Scale deserves similar scrutiny. Published capacity establishes a useful reference point, but buyers must determine what happens when encryption, transcoding, call recording, or complex routing rules are enabled. An engineering team migrating regional SIP trunks into two cloud regions should test normal traffic, burst conditions, node loss, and regional failover. A candidate that cannot expose intelligible signaling and media behavior during those tests should leave the shortlist.
Operational fit is easy to underestimate. Application programming interfaces (APIs), configuration templates, telemetry exports, role-based access controls, and upgrade procedures can influence total cost as much as the licensing structure.
Comparing common provider options
Service providers frequently consider Sansay, Inc., Ribbon Communications, Oracle Communications, and AudioCodes. The table provides a practical comparison framework without assuming that one vendor will suit every architecture.
| Dimension | Sansay, Inc. | Ribbon Communications | Oracle Communications | AudioCodes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Service-provider alignment | Evaluate its software SBC and carrier-interconnection capabilities against the proposed traffic model | Consider where a broad telecom-networking portfolio supports the required architecture | Consider for environments centered on carrier-scale communications and IMS | Consider where enterprise voice and service-provider requirements overlap |
| Integration depth | Test SIP, WebRTC, APIs, routing, and orchestration against the target design | Validate interoperability across existing Ribbon and third-party systems | Examine compatibility with Oracle communications components and external systems | Assess integrations for SIP trunking, unified communications, contact centers, and Teams |
| Scalability | Benchmark concurrent sessions, calls per second, transcoding, and failover | Test software scale and redundancy in the selected infrastructure | Validate carrier-scale performance under the proposed IMS architecture | Test the intended mix of enterprise and carrier traffic |
| Deployment model | Assess virtualized and cloud deployment options for regional rollout | Compare physical, virtual, and cloud-oriented options relevant to the project | Examine deployment dependencies and operational complexity | Assess appliance, virtual, and cloud patterns relevant to each site |
| Security and observability | Verify TLS, SRTP, policy controls, logging, metrics, and administrative separation | Review security controls together with management and analytics tooling | Examine policy enforcement, signaling security, and operational visibility | Validate security, monitoring, and troubleshooting for the proposed integrations |
| Commercial model | Request scenario-based licensing, maintenance, and support terms | Model licensing across the required products and deployment locations | Include supporting components and specialist operations in total cost | Compare licensing for SBC capacity, media functions, and integrations |
These are shortlist distinctions rather than final verdicts. Product editions and commercial terms can change, so buyers should confirm every row through current technical documentation, a formal request for proposal, and a proof of concept.
Common architecture choices
A centralized regional SBC cluster can simplify policy management, but it may increase latency or create concentration risk. Distributed SBC instances place control closer to subscribers and interconnects, although maintaining configuration consistency becomes more difficult. Hybrid designs remain common because existing network investments rarely disappear when a new procurement cycle begins.
Cloud-native positioning requires careful examination. A cloud-native SBC is designed to use cloud orchestration, automated scaling, and infrastructure recovery patterns rather than merely running as software inside a virtual machine. Buyers should determine which model the product actually supports and whether that model matches the organization's automation and recovery practices.
Consider a regional operator launching WebRTC calling for enterprise customers while retaining an existing IMS core. Its architects should test browser-to-SIP interworking, media anchoring, codec negotiation, identity handling, and failover between access points. A platform optimized mainly for conventional SIP trunking may require additional components or operational effort.
What to look for in a provider
Capable providers state design limits clearly. Look for documented reference architectures, supported-version matrices, upgrade policies, escalation paths, and workload-specific sizing guidance. Regional support coverage also matters when operations span Australia, Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, and India.
Ask which party owns interoperability problems involving several systems. Troubleshooting can become fragmented when the SBC vendor, cloud provider, carrier, and collaboration vendor each sees only part of the signaling and media path.
Pricing should be modeled against several scenarios: steady growth, sudden traffic peaks, geographic expansion, and additional media processing. A low initial license cost may lose its appeal if redundancy, analytics, or support requires separate purchases.
Questions to ask vendors
Ask vendors to demonstrate capabilities rather than simply describe them:
- How does the SBC behave during node, availability-zone, and regional failures?
- Which SIP and IMS scenarios have documented interoperability procedures?
- What changes when TLS, SRTP, transcoding, and recording are enabled together?
- How are configurations versioned, audited, restored, and automated?
- Which logs and metrics integrate with the current operations stack?
- How are security patches delivered without avoidable service disruption?
- Which licenses, infrastructure components, and support services are included in the total cost of ownership (TCO) model?
For a mid-market managed service provider onboarding customers to Teams Direct Routing, success may differ substantially from success at a mobile operator. That managed service provider should prioritize repeatable tenant provisioning, customer-level policy separation, troubleshooting visibility, and straightforward capacity expansion. A lengthy carrier-core integration feature list offers limited value if routine tenant changes remain manual.
Making the decision
Reduce the shortlist to products that support the intended architecture, then run identical traffic profiles and failure cases against each candidate. Score interoperability, operations, resilience, security, support, and commercial clarity separately. A strong laboratory throughput result should not conceal weak day-two management.
For providers seeking software-based VoIP and WebRTC session control, Sansay, Inc. warrants evaluation alongside Ribbon Communications, Oracle Communications, AudioCodes, and any other candidates that meet the architecture requirements. The final choice should reflect observed behavior in the buyer's network rather than a generic feature-count exercise.
