On Thu, 29 Sep 2011, Nick Khamis wrote:
Hello Jeff,
There will always be fierce competition, we are starting of with
prepaid for an obvious source of quick revenue, we will also be
rolling out a few more products in the next year.. It seems like they
LIE about their LD rates. A company in Australia was
charged with this not too long ago. Stolen minutes? Not that I would
be interested in stealing! I just want to be educated
in such an act.
You will often see discussion on this list about asterisk servers being
"compromised" and the result being very expensive calls placed until the
compromise is noticed and shutdown. Those calls are placed by nefarious
wholesalers that take advantage of the "free" routes they manage to find
as long as possible. Hard to compete against free!
Other games the calling card companies play - they will release a card
with unbelievable rates so that it quickly gains market share, then slowly
back off the minutes offered by the card (without changing the rate sheets
of course) until it is noticed by the consumers, who stop buying it. Then
that card is discontinued and another is produced in the same manner. You
will notice on the calling card shelves there are only a handful of
companies producing lots of different cards.
There are many more tricks they use to dupe the consumers and stifle
competition. Hidden or non-disclosed connection rates, "maintenance fees"
charged every few days to burn off credit on the cards, time restrictions
on the lower rates, etc. We actually produced a card once we called
"TRUTH" (which was honest about rates, had no hidden fees, etc) and it
sold ok for a while, but when the card next to it on the shelf claims
twice the minutes for the same $$$, eventually they win.
In the end this business doesn't make money unless you are selling
millions of minutes per month, and even then the margins are slim and
you have to play the same games to compete. What we thought would be a
fairly easy business to run became a maintenance nightmare, and a single
instance of fraud could wipe out months worth of profits.
A2billing didn't exist when we started, so we rolled our own. Seems
pretty popular now - maybe it would work well for you.
Good luck,
j
Of course we don't have to use the same in/outbound providers. I
should have been clearer about that. You mentioned Least Cost
Route/Rate (LCR), any reason why you did not use what is already out
there? Provided by a2billing etc...? We can also implement something
using AGI if needed....
Nick.
On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 11:21 AM, Jeff LaCoursiere <[email protected]> wrote:
On Thu, 29 Sep 2011, Nick Khamis wrote:
I should have mentioned we are interested in international long
distance. That will
be a big part of our business.
It sounds like you are intending to start a calling card company. Good luck
- the competition is fierce, and you will be competing against companies
that outright lie about the capacity of their cards, and use stolen minutes
to fulfill them as often as they can.
If you intend to do wholesale by reselling, you don't need to use the same
company for inbound and outbound. In fact for outbound you will probably
have many upstream providers, as your goal will be to find the cheapest
reliable route in every case. You will need to code something for route
selection (I did this in C/AGI).
For inbound I use IP Comms, which has worked well. Unlimited inbound per
DID, but NOT unlimited channels. For outbound I had arrangements with STi,
Voipjet, and many others for smaller route sets. I also participated in the
wholesale market at Arbinet, who just got bought out by someone...
Cheers,
j
On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 11:12 AM, Danny Nicholas <[email protected]>
wrote:
They aren't everywhere, but we have had good experience with Voicepulse
and
their rate is typically less than $0.015 per minute.
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Nick Khamis
Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2011 10:09 AM
To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] No Bull Service Providers
Very true... But there should be an equilibrium, the "relaiable service,
and
aggressive pricing" comes to meet?
Guys please share your experiences.
Cheers,
Nick
On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 10:58 AM, C. Savinovich
<[email protected]> wrote:
In my professional opinion, the phrases "I don't want no Bull service"
and "I want the cheapest service" are total contradictions. Down the
road something is not going to give.
C. Savinovich
On September 29, 2011 at 10:47 AM Danny Nicholas <[email protected]>
wrote:
This belongs on the "commercial" list.
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Nick
Khamis
Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2011 9:44 AM
To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Subject: [asterisk-users] No Bull Service Providers
Hello Everyone,
We are looking for DID and SIP Termination service providers. Since
there are so many these days, can you guy mention the BIG players
that are supplying the rest of the little guy? We are looking for the
cheapest, and scaleable infrastructure (i.e. unlimited channels for
DID, and trunks for termintation). To summarize we are looking for
the major players in the DID and SIP Trunk market, no/limited
headache. This is for wholesaler service.
Thanks in Advance,
Nick
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Telecom & Telephony Consulting
646.982.3572
[email protected]
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