I like Nuvio's model a lot. They have a good model to help WISPs finance the
equipment and they also give leads.
I have my beef with Nuvio as well. They were the second partner I almost
signed up with, but on that one I backed out at the final hour.
Part of the problem is that I am too easilly annoyed, and sometimes make
decissions out of principle. I jsut can't stand dealing with stupid people.
If I make a good case for something that is logical and make sense and is
justifiable, I should be entitled to it and get it. If my request is
denied, and the person can not give a justifyable reason why, then I got a
problem with it. I believe there needs to be an open door to negotiation,
and people should use common sense to rule their discusions.
I had two issues with Nuvio. The first was that they also put on the big
push for me to provide business managed PBX. I knew it was going to be one
of those deals where if I didn't sell a certain number of business managed
PBX services, I was going to have problems with the relationship. The
primary reason that I wanted to sell VOIP was for the residential markets.
What irratated me was the sales guy insisted, that the only way he'd let me
sign up is if I committed to purchasing a 5 line system, that I could use to
DEMO out to the clients that requested our service. Although that kinda did
make sense, to sell to the residential market place which was what I planned
to do, I really didn't need to loan 5 phones out to the end user. For that
matter at residential prices I didn't need to DEMO any. I jsut needed to use
one in my office that I could have someone call me on, so I could show them
how well it worked. Or I could initiate a no risk return policy, where I'd
send it to them, and they could back out if the quality wasn't good. He
said, well then just use the 5 phones in your office. I did not want to do
that bnecause my office was not a good candidate for VOIP. Its the worse
link on my network today. Its in the middle of the forest going through a
mile of trees, 5 hops back across my network. VoIP got to bad when it rained
really hard, based on my link margin.
I only needed to buy 1, for DEMOs, that I could use on non-rainy days. So I
refused to buy the 5 demo phones. I just couldn't justify having 5 phones
sitting there on the shelf paying $200 everymonth for something that was
going to jsut sit there on the shelf. Plus if I did want to lend a business
a DEMO set, I see no reason why I should foot the bill. What cost does NUVIO
really have to provide a couple DEMO phones? I offered an alternative. I
said I would pre-purchase 5 phone services, for my first 5 clients that I
didn't ahve yet, and I said that I would buy 1 phone of each type that they
offered, jsut so I could show people their options if I ever decided to go
onsite to show people. He declined the offer. I jsut thought that that was
a stupid decission. The sales rep had worked with me now for almost two
month. I made a firm commitment, I had 10,000 end users in a 10 location
project condo deal, that I was going to launch the offering at. Already had
most of the marketing done because of the CommPartner deal. Why in the
world, would a sales person pass up that partnership opportunity, over the
requrement for me to buy 5 DEMO phone services that wqould never be used? I
could ahve lied, and sold the 5 DEMOs services after the fact, you know
giving them to friends and familly. But thatwould have been deceptive, and
I'm an honest guy. I jsut couldn't understand it. So I labeled him a stupid
person and decided not to do business with him. Maybe I'm the stupid one,
as today I don't ahve a VOIP solution. But quite honestly, its not worth
getting into this with a partner that you don't see eye to eye with that is
not flexable. So instead, I refer most of my business clients to Primus.
And they just take care of it. I only get 15%, but so what I have zero
headaches. The only problem is they don't offer residential service throguh
partners just direct. I'll probably stay with Primus on the business,
because frankly I don't want the liabilty, and they had ZERO problems being
flexable. They wanted my business, and they tried hard to get it. The ironic
part is that, Primus screwed me out of about a few hundred thousand dollars
worth of DSL clients about 5 years back when they were onthe verge of
bankruptcy (but managed to escape it somehow). But you know what, the guy
appologized, and actually still tried to win our business back even when he
knew he was fighting against an obstacle that huge. He must have really
wanted our business. I have to say that made me feel special. Thats the
kind of guy that I want to deal with. Its the kind of guy that I wish I
could find to work for me in sales. I made it hard for him, I was burnt out
on evaluating VOIP providers. But he made it so easy for me. Flexability was
their middle name, they just wanted to get the deal signed and move on.
As for Part-15 and Nuvio. I'm not apposed to Michael making his cut.
However, what I proposed for WISPA is not them to be a reseller or a COOP.
I don't want to pay WISPA. I want to deal direct with the wholesaler. If
the wholesaler wants to pay out to Part-15, thats the wholesaler's
puragative. For WISPA i suggested WISPA negotiating the terms, not becoming
a reseller of the product to its members. There is a big difference.
However, I may nto find what I'm looking for. If I ahve to go through a
reseller, Mcihale would be high on my lsit of people that I'd trust to work
through, jsut because I think he has enough momentum to survive based on his
position. So please send me any of teh info you have on the program, I would
like toview it for consideration.
What I may not have discussed is, the legal ramification of working through
a reseller. What happens if teh reseller goes bankrupt? What legal contract
is in place that allows me to keep my clients, when I do not have a contract
directly with the wholesaler. With DSL, that has happened to me twice. I
spent years developing a client base with the understanding I'd make my
business on the residuals, but when my wholesaler (Covad's reseller) went
belly up or was about to, I had no legal ramification with Covad directly on
protecting my clients. It also works the other way, if the the actually
wholesale carrier does under the reseller becomes a shield between me the
WISP and the prime wholesale carrier. Legally things are a disaster when
some of the partners in the relationship fail. I don't ever want to be in
that position again. It will kill a reputation. I want a contract with the
person providing service to my client, so I ahve legal recourse if it is
ever needed, or atleast the right to negotiate under the terms of the
contract. I got bittem a third time throughthe same problem when I was a
reseller for Crosslink that resold NAS DSL. The response from NAS was
always, we honor our agreements with Crosslink 100% however we don't ahve an
agreement with you, so we can't help you. The problem is that the deal
between the reseller (the crosslink) and the Carrier (NAS) gets out of sync
with the terms of the deal between the reseller (crosslink) and the
reseller's reseller (ME).
I don't care who gets a commission, or who gets their peiceof the action, I
jsut want to make sure the person I'm paying the check to or that my
customer is paying the check to, is the one that I or they ahve a contract
with, and is the one providing the service, so I can enforce my agreement
with them if it is ever needed. There is nothing worse than providing a
service to someone and responding to them, sorry I can't help you I'm just a
reseller of the reseller, you got to live with it or cancel, my hands are
tide. It destroys a cpmpanies reputation.
Tom DeReggi
RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc
IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mac Dearman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "WISPA General List" <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, January 05, 2006 4:13 PM
Subject: Re: [WISPA] VOIP on a shoestring
Part-15 is now doing the same thing that I have been at since early
summer - - which is Nuvio. The only difference being that Bullet is not
paying out all that he has coming in - - which is his right! I ran this
across the list many months ago offering to make nothing off of someone
elses VoIP connections as resellers. I and 3 others are selling Nuvio
services branded as our own and I must confess - - its been real good!
check it out: https://mactel.nuvio.com
If any of you other wisps want to resell VoIP - - drop me a line off
lists and I will shoot you any info you might require
Mac Dearman
Maximum Access, LLC.
www.inetsouth.com
www.mactel.nuvio.com
www.radioresponse.org (Katrina relief)
Rayville, La.
318.728.8600 318.303.4227
318.303.4229
Charles Wu wrote:
Tom,
Your idea is sound, but personally, I would think that what you propose
falls into the same category as the "WISP Buying Coop"
IMO, WISPA needs to focus on talking / lobbying in front of the FCC
Now, if WISPA members want to get together and form such a CoOp -- go for
it
Btw...Part-15 I believe has some sort of wholesale VoIP program for its
members (through Nuvio?)...
-Charles
-------------------------------------------
WiNOG Austin, TX
March 13-15, 2006
http://www.winog.com
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Tom DeReggi
Sent: Thursday, January 05, 2006 1:12 PM
To: WISPA General List
Subject: Re: [WISPA] VOIP on a shoestring
Matt Larson,
I do not have adequate experience to pass judgement on your suggested
configuration. However I will add, base on my recent Rant regarding
Wholesale VOIP providers that don't look at small WISPs as valuable
partners, I believe leveraging WISPA membership base to negotiate a good
deal for us all is a good idea. I believe WISPA should agree to endorse a
wholesale provider in exchange for them to be required to give partnership
to 100% of WISPA member's that request partnership. I'd be willing to
waive
my personal preference of providers in favor of selecting a VOIP
wholesaler that supports WISPs and recognizes our consolidated numbers as
worthy partners.
WISPA then could also act as a mechanism to more effectively distribute
reocurring changing information to the membership so the Wholesaler only
has
to do it once.
Many discussion have been had on what ventures should be explored by WISPA
for the benefit of the membership, that would not be in conflict with the
services that the members themselves already provided, and was in line
with the goals of the organization adn what it is intented to be.
Facilitating a group deal for VOIP is one of those things that I think
would
be a great thing for WISPA to do. But its got to be an all or nothing
deal, meaning vendor accepts all WISPA members that are interested, as a
condition
of agreement. Negotiate once, replicate many.
The reality is most WISPs are not the size alone to have any weight to
negotiate. Maybe a few guys like Travis have enough volume, but not the
majority of us. I'd be willing to donate time to that cause if needed,
wether it be determining the requirements needed in an agreement or
distributing the info after the fact.
Whether the provider be you, Matt Liotta, or a national carrier is
irrelevant to me. I just believe that WISPs will own at least 15% of the
nations broadband subscribers at some point, and I believe that that is a
significant enough market share that there has got to be someone with
enough
brains to realize the value of WISP partners, to the extent that they will
offer favorable terms to the organization.
My concern is that most VOIP providers (that value partnerships) home in
on business managed PBX VOIP solutions. Although I do not dispute their
reasoning for that, that does not help WISPs nationwide, whose businesses
may include a large amount of residential focus as well.
Tom DeReggi
RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc
IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband
----- Original Message -----
From: "Matt Liotta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "WISPA General List" <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, January 05, 2006 9:50 AM
Subject: Re: [WISPA] VOIP on a shoestring
I don't believe you will find good margins with the setup you are
specifying. Additionally, you can forget about fax working, which is an
absolute requirement for businesses.
If anyone on this list wants to do VoIP over wireless, figure out how to
do fax before committing to the business. From experience I can tell you
that it cost us an enormous amount of money to get fax working with
Asterisk.
-Matt
Matt Larsen - Lists wrote:
Hello all,
After a year and a half of watching, jumping in and learning about VOIP,
I think I have come up with a way to implement it with a relatively low
budget setup. Here is my very general outline of how to deliver VOIP on
a shoestring:
1) Asterisk server with AMP (Asterisk Management Portal): This is a
great soho phone system, but on the right machine it appears that it can
also be used as a production VOIP server. The key is that it uses MySQL
databases for the extension and trunk configurations. Another
necessity - G.729 codec licensing. G.729, GSM and ilbc codecs work
great
on wireless - even garden variety wifi. AMP has a nice web-based
interface for maintenance and a decent website for checking voice mail
and account usage.
2) Freeside billing server - Freeside can be modified to submit the
necessary variables for voip service to an AMP box. That means that the
billing for the VOIP can be done with the same server that is doing ISP
billing, and it can also handle provisioning/deprovisioning. I don't
have this quite sorted out yet, but am getting close.
3) An ATA (Analog Telephone Adapter) that has a built in router and
supports the codecs listed above (G729, GSM, ilbc). My preferred one at
the moment is the Grandstream HandyTone 488. It is $75 to $80. This
unit includes one VOIP line, a router with dhcp and nat, an FXO port
(which means that it can route calls through a regular phone line) and a
PSTN pass through port. If the customer has an existing phone line, 911
calls can be set up to go right to their regular phone. I have tested
out the Sipura and Linksys adapters and they work as well, but the
Grandstream has more features for a lower price.
4) A GOOD ITSP (Internet Telephone Service Provider). An ITSP is where
you can get your numbers and long distance termination. Right now, I am
very happy with Teliax for my numbers and inbound termination, and
Voipjet for outbound termination. Voipjet is a little cheaper, so when
everything averages out, minutes cost about 1.5cents each. If there is
a
lot of local traffic, you can also get a few local lines and place the
calls through those lines instead of using the ITSP. Teliax has a
wide
selection of local numbers, better than just about anyone else, and
their
support and network performance is top-notch. I'm not using a large
volume of minutes yet, but I think there may be some interest in putting
together a plan for WISPA members to band together for volume discounts.
5) Find the right balance of pricing and features - I"m looking at
$24.95/month for residential with a $50 setup fee - but we maintain
ownership of the ATA unit. If a 1000minute soft cap is put on the
residential accounts, you can figure $15 maximum for the minutes used -
with $5 (approx cost) for the inbound number that leaves a $5/month
profit. If the user only uses 500 minutes, then that is a $12.50/month
profit. That is where a few local lines might come in handy to provide
a
non-ITSP route to the PSTN that is fixed and doesn't have per minute
charges. That would increase the profit margin. Businesses should be
under a different plan completely.
We are getting demand from some strange places for VOIP. Several small
towns in my service area have monthly phone rates of $90-$100 per line
for local phone service. We are finding that the phone service is more
valuable to them than the Internet and they could care less about having
a local number. A VOIP phone with a toll-free number is just fine for
them, and even with the Internet service they can cut their phone bill
in
half. That is a little nuts.
I welcome any comments from others who are working on the same thing.
Matt Larsen
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
I'm sure there are some guys out there who are going to have some ideas
on ways to improve this, so please speak up if you have some ideas.
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