Currently the corporation I work for Capstone Communications, has a joint venture (with VoIP permit holders) in Mexico where we are building out termination POP's (on ON/OFF NET and Satellite rural connectivity). We currently have 33 OFFNET locations and one ON NET location up and running.
I can tell you from my personal experience that VoIP along with anything you need to operate a Telecommunications service (such as Internet and PSTN trunk lines) in Mexico is highly regulated. Getting DID's for legal POP's is not a big issue if you have the VoIP permits and you are working with the carriers on projects where COFETEL can keep a tight regulatory grip on you. Even then, it is not a cake walk, we have been at this for over a year now and have faced many regulator challenges, but where there is a will there is always a way. Earlier this year there was a drawn out COFETEL investigation/witch hunt, because a carriers was caught selling large numbers of DID's to Vonage and Vonage is not a registered Mexican company nor has telecommunications permits from which to legally operate a VoIP service, and I don't think they intent to get any since their market nitche is offering the Mexican DID service to drop down the communications cost of Mexican families calling into the US. So by selling DID's (that will be used outside of Mexico, where the government makes no money) carriers place themselves at risk (of being fined by COFETEL) and submitting themselves to the head aches of a Cofetel witch hunt. Even thought the carrier in question got busted, Vonage found another carrier to sell them the DID's, so I guess these fines are not so bad after all. Humm, maybe you should try a Tijuana local carrier? Kind regards, Karim Jose Delgado Capstone Communications 1-(678)-884-9126 (USA) 1-(519)-488-0309 (Canada) 011-52-555-351-3651 (Mexico) _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Biz mailing list [email protected] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz
