Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 6:35 am Post subject: [asterisk-biz] Dear Termination Providers,
Please remove me from this mailing list Thank you.
From:asterisk-biz-bounces@lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-biz-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of ContactTel Business
Sent: 04 May 2009 12:28 AM
To: 'Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion'
Subject: Re: [asterisk-biz] Dear Termination Providers,
My point exactly always suckers that try to get 0.0000000000001 termination.. but want TDM quality...
Hence why not have an @ cost scenario or even worst.. just make it free like some do.. and play ads..
And wtf we talking about this ?
From:asterisk-biz-bounces@lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-biz-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Stephen Davies
Sent: May-03-09 2:57 PM
To: Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion
Subject: Re: [asterisk-biz] Dear Termination Providers,
2009/5/1 Peter Beckman <beckman@angryox.com (beckman@angryox.com)>
Alexander Harrowell wrote:
What's needed is a rate deck that includes every route the provider
supports, US, Canada and everything else.
Hi,
You seem to want to evaluate termination providers on nothing else except price. I'm not sure why encouraging that simplistic rule is in the interests of termination providers, or your own, for that matter.
What about minor details like quality, CLI support, whether the terminating lines are legitimate or stolen from innocent third parties - don't they matter?
Some unscrupulous scenarios for terminators to use if lots of originators have all these rate decks in their routing engines and are routing solely by price:
1) Publish a low rate to a destination. "Connect" calls in excess of your capacity (so you can bill them), but connect them to nowhere. Once originators notice apologise profusely for the technical problem but keep the money (the originator won't be able to say exactly which calls failed in this manner). Fail 10% of calls like this and you can make up what your published low rate is costing you, and the originator probably will accept the CSR that they get.
2) Publish a low rate but run your clock a bit fast to make up the difference. Remember that you only need to be 0.000001c/min cheapest in order to get lots and lots of minutes because people are selecting automatically by price.
3) "Forget" to mention various billing wrinkles. Your excuse is that the csv format doesn't provide for the flag-fall charge, or the call attempt charge if your calls' CSR falls below a threshold, or what have you. Make sure the info is published somewhere even though you "can't" put them in the csv.
Can others think of more (this is quite fun >:) )
So surely you need to know more about your termination partner than just their price? And do you really want to tell your termination providers that all you care about is price. Some cheaply terminated calls already sound pretty terrible. Do we really want to encourage this race to rock bottom?
Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 2:39 pm Post subject: [asterisk-biz] Dear Termination Providers,
There’s a link on the bottom where you can remove yourself,
From:asterisk-biz-bounces@lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-biz-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Rodwin Goldstone
Sent: May-04-09 3:31 AM
To: 'Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion'
Subject: Re: [asterisk-biz] Dear Termination Providers,
Please remove me from this mailing list Thank you.
From:asterisk-biz-bounces@lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-biz-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of ContactTel Business
Sent: 04 May 2009 12:28 AM
To: 'Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion'
Subject: Re: [asterisk-biz] Dear Termination Providers,
My point exactly always suckers that try to get 0.0000000000001 termination.. but want TDM quality...
Hence why not have an @ cost scenario or even worst.. just make it free like some do.. and play ads..
And wtf we talking about this ?
From:asterisk-biz-bounces@lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-biz-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Stephen Davies
Sent: May-03-09 2:57 PM
To: Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion
Subject: Re: [asterisk-biz] Dear Termination Providers,
2009/5/1 Peter Beckman <beckman@angryox.com (beckman@angryox.com)>
Alexander Harrowell wrote:
What's needed is a rate deck that includes every route the provider
supports, US, Canada and everything else.
Hi,
You seem to want to evaluate termination providers on nothing else except price. I'm not sure why encouraging that simplistic rule is in the interests of termination providers, or your own, for that matter.
What about minor details like quality, CLI support, whether the terminating lines are legitimate or stolen from innocent third parties - don't they matter?
Some unscrupulous scenarios for terminators to use if lots of originators have all these rate decks in their routing engines and are routing solely by price:
1) Publish a low rate to a destination. "Connect" calls in excess of your capacity (so you can bill them), but connect them to nowhere. Once originators notice apologise profusely for the technical problem but keep the money (the originator won't be able to say exactly which calls failed in this manner). Fail 10% of calls like this and you can make up what your published low rate is costing you, and the originator probably will accept the CSR that they get.
2) Publish a low rate but run your clock a bit fast to make up the difference. Remember that you only need to be 0.000001c/min cheapest in order to get lots and lots of minutes because people are selecting automatically by price.
3) "Forget" to mention various billing wrinkles. Your excuse is that the csv format doesn't provide for the flag-fall charge, or the call attempt charge if your calls' CSR falls below a threshold, or what have you. Make sure the info is published somewhere even though you "can't" put them in the csv.
Can others think of more (this is quite fun >:) )
So surely you need to know more about your termination partner than just their price? And do you really want to tell your termination providers that all you care about is price. Some cheaply terminated calls already sound pretty terrible. Do we really want to encourage this race to rock bottom?
Posted: Fri May 08, 2009 4:15 pm Post subject: [asterisk-biz] Dear Termination Providers,
Hope I dont get flammed but here goes...
I like NDA's. It makes business sense. The telecom industry has always been a close knit of carrier relationships. Those relationship start with an NDA, as Jon Todd mentioned the big guys wont talk to you unless they get you to sign an NDA, and if you make a business decision not to bother with those carriers who have such practices you'll always be dealing the with the little "me too" carriers. You know the ones that buy routes from every other reseller out there mark it up and then sell to you. When something doesnt work good luck trying to get it fixed in a reasonable time frame. They dont own the routes. The NDA makes sense to me because it lets me know that the carrier and customer are serious in entering a business relationship, something worthwhile, not a BS 5% markup on a route that has 15 "carriers" in the middle but really belongs to AT&T. I'm all for open source, I think its great for software and problem sovling, but not for the telecom industry(carriers) on a business level, I dont like it that some companies openly display their rates. It makes it difficult for me to sell my routes because I have to compete with "me too" providers that dont actually own anything and cant guarantee quality, they dont share my overhead. Am I making sense here? At the end of the day all the minutes in the world are really terminated on a hand full of carriers (mostly settlement traffic). VoIP in the early 90's was awesome because thats when people made real money, the barriers of entry were higher then and competition was respectable. I feel like I have to sort through so many junk routes and companies now a days just to satisfy my demanding customers and this always gives voip a bad name. I remember buying Cisco 5300's for like $45k a pop, and never ever having a customer even blink about the quality because on the other VOIP End was a carrier who also shelled out some dough and was serious about the relationship and made sure calls went thru. What do you guys think? I'm not trying to hinder innovation or VoIP maturity here, I'm talking about the business aspect of things. I feel like the carrier market has gone to sh*t. Ok I'm done ranting and raving. Holla at me if you want awesome routes at reasonable prices and are willing to sign an NDA ;)
-ONE
On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 5:56 PM, Trixter aka Bret McDanel <trixter@0xdecafbad.com (trixter@0xdecafbad.com)> wrote:
Quote:
On Fri, 2009-04-24 at 14:35 -0700, John Todd wrote:
Quote:
It is almost always contradictory to provider's best interests to
make their rate sheets easy to import or understand. Here's a
> document set that I wrote a while back in the hopes that I could beat
Quote:
providers up into giving me the correct rate table data in a format I
could use:
I dunno, if people are providing a good service at a fair price, then
its in the providers interest to make it easier, not harder, for more
people to get that info and thus use that provider. The higher the
hurdles are for a customer to work with the provider, the fewer total
customers that provider is going to have.
I for example will not sign an NDA to get a rate list, so any provider
that asks for one is immediately ruled out - and I am not the only
one.
Even if the service is more expensive, if the quality, support, etc is
there, people will pay the higher price. Perhaps not everyone, but that
gives providers the opportunity to have a tiered or multi-branded setup.
For example a wholesale backend with 2 or more front ends, one with a
higher price, with only quality routes, functioning caller id, and a
support team that can be contacted quickly and easily, and another that
is only for people that look at price and care little about any of the
other stuff. They can even look like they are competing with
themselves, and let the consumer decide what level of service they want
and get more customers.
Posted: Fri May 08, 2009 4:35 pm Post subject: [asterisk-biz] Dear Termination Providers,
To some degree, carriers want to protect their pricing structures
because it's an integral part of their competitive business model. It's
a bit the way most retail stores will toss you out on the curb if you
wander in with a notebook and start writing down the prices of their items.
However, the flip side of that argument is that, if you're REALLY able
to compete in the market, you shouldn't be afraid that your prices are
known by any and everyone. Sure, there's the chance that Bob the
mom'n'pop carrier down the road might undercut you for a tenth of a cent
or so on a highly desirable route, but if the ONLY think you're selling
is price, you may as well pack up shop and find another business.
Carrier routes are a commodity market. Price simply cannot be the only
area in which you compete -- in fact, it probably shouldn't be your
number one priority regardless. VoIP never gets bad press because of its
price. It gets bad press because of quality, customer service,
misleading or hidden contractual clauses, difficulty of setup, or any
number of things that you simply can't put in an NDA (and couldn't
enforce secrecy upon, even if you tried).
Signing an NDA doesn't mean really anything about whether or not your
customer is truly interested. Hell... anyone with a pen and 20 seconds
of free time can sign an NDA. The only thing it (nebulously) protects
from is you gathering rates from providers and telling company X down
the road that you can beat their rates because you've seen them
recently, and yours are better. I've signed numerous NDAs in the last
half a decade with companies whose rates and terms were laughable. It
seemed from their terms that they were hardly serious about building a
serious business relationship, so I'm not sure I buy the argument than
an NDA in some way delineates between the serious and the non-serious
businesses.
I like NDA's. It makes business sense. The telecom industry has always
been a close knit of carrier relationships. Those relationship start
with an NDA, as Jon Todd mentioned the big guys wont talk to you
unless they get you to sign an NDA, and if you make a business
decision not to bother with those carriers who have such practices
you'll always be dealing the with the little "me too" carriers. You
know the ones that buy routes from every other reseller out there mark
it up and then sell to you. When something doesnt work good luck
trying to get it fixed in a reasonable time frame. They dont own the
routes. The NDA makes sense to me because it lets me know that the
carrier and customer are serious in entering a business relationship,
something worthwhile, not a BS 5% markup on a route that has 15
"carriers" in the middle but really belongs to AT&T. I'm all for open
source, I think its great for software and problem sovling, but not
for the telecom industry(carriers) on a business level, I dont like it
that some companies openly display their rates. It makes it difficult
for me to sell my routes because I have to compete with "me too"
providers that dont actually own anything and cant guarantee quality,
they dont share my overhead. Am I making sense here? At the end of the
day all the minutes in the world are really terminated on a hand full
of carriers (mostly settlement traffic). VoIP in the early 90's was
awesome because thats when people made real money, the barriers of
entry were higher then and competition was respectable. I feel like I
have to sort through so many junk routes and companies now a days just
to satisfy my demanding customers and this always gives voip a bad
name. I remember buying Cisco 5300's for like $45k a pop, and never
ever having a customer even blink about the quality because on the
other VOIP End was a carrier who also shelled out some dough and was
serious about the relationship and made sure calls went thru. What do
you guys think? I'm not trying to hinder innovation or VoIP maturity
here, I'm talking about the business aspect of things. I feel like the
carrier market has gone to sh*t. Ok I'm done ranting and raving. Holla
at me if you want awesome routes at reasonable prices and are willing
to sign an NDA ;)
-ONE
On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 5:56 PM, Trixter aka Bret McDanel
<trixter@0xdecafbad.com <mailto:trixter@0xdecafbad.com>> wrote:
On Fri, 2009-04-24 at 14:35 -0700, John Todd wrote:
> It is almost always contradictory to provider's best interests to
> make their rate sheets easy to import or understand. Here's a
> document set that I wrote a while back in the hopes that I could
beat
> providers up into giving me the correct rate table data in a
format I
> could use:
>
> http://www.loligo.com/asterisk/misc/rates/
I dunno, if people are providing a good service at a fair price, then
its in the providers interest to make it easier, not harder, for more
people to get that info and thus use that provider. The higher the
hurdles are for a customer to work with the provider, the fewer total
customers that provider is going to have.
I for example will not sign an NDA to get a rate list, so any provider
that asks for one is immediately ruled out - and I am not the only
one.
Even if the service is more expensive, if the quality, support, etc is
there, people will pay the higher price. Perhaps not everyone,
but that
gives providers the opportunity to have a tiered or multi-branded
setup.
For example a wholesale backend with 2 or more front ends, one with a
higher price, with only quality routes, functioning caller id, and a
support team that can be contacted quickly and easily, and another
that
is only for people that look at price and care little about any
of the
other stuff. They can even look like they are competing with
themselves, and let the consumer decide what level of service they
want
and get more customers.
Posted: Fri May 08, 2009 4:57 pm Post subject: [asterisk-biz] Dear Termination Providers,
Neil,
You are absolutely right. It's quality not price, but the consumer doesn't initially understand that. Usually after signing an NDA carriers will give you their rack rates, you need to give some sort of a commitment for certain destinations and they will offer you good pricing. No one and I mean no one does A-Z, every company has a certain market that a majority of their traffic goes to. You know whats laughable is that I came accross a carrier that markets itself as a "wholesale" termination provider, they publicly display their rates, but its upto you to keep checking their site to see if the rates changed, they don't send rate addendums and get this they are only pre-paid! I agree that anyone with a pen and fax can fill out the NDA, but in my experience those people were usually serious about doing some sort of business.
On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 1:31 PM, SIP <sip@arcdiv.com (sip@arcdiv.com)> wrote:
Quote:
To some degree, carriers want to protect their pricing structures
because it's an integral part of their competitive business model. It's
a bit the way most retail stores will toss you out on the curb if you
wander in with a notebook and start writing down the prices of their items.
However, the flip side of that argument is that, if you're REALLY able
to compete in the market, you shouldn't be afraid that your prices are
known by any and everyone. Sure, there's the chance that Bob the
mom'n'pop carrier down the road might undercut you for a tenth of a cent
or so on a highly desirable route, but if the ONLY think you're selling
is price, you may as well pack up shop and find another business.
Carrier routes are a commodity market. Price simply cannot be the only
area in which you compete -- in fact, it probably shouldn't be your
number one priority regardless. VoIP never gets bad press because of its
price. It gets bad press because of quality, customer service,
misleading or hidden contractual clauses, difficulty of setup, or any
number of things that you simply can't put in an NDA (and couldn't
enforce secrecy upon, even if you tried).
Signing an NDA doesn't mean really anything about whether or not your
customer is truly interested. Hell... anyone with a pen and 20 seconds
of free time can sign an NDA. The only thing it (nebulously) protects
from is you gathering rates from providers and telling company X down
the road that you can beat their rates because you've seen them
recently, and yours are better. I've signed numerous NDAs in the last
half a decade with companies whose rates and terms were laughable. It
seemed from their terms that they were hardly serious about building a
serious business relationship, so I'm not sure I buy the argument than
an NDA in some way delineates between the serious and the non-serious
businesses.
I like NDA's. It makes business sense. The telecom industry has always
been a close knit of carrier relationships. Those relationship start
> with an NDA, as Jon Todd mentioned the big guys wont talk to you
Quote:
unless they get you to sign an NDA, and if you make a business
decision not to bother with those carriers who have such practices
you'll always be dealing the with the little "me too" carriers. You
> know the ones that buy routes from every other reseller out there mark
Quote:
it up and then sell to you. When something doesnt work good luck
trying to get it fixed in a reasonable time frame. They dont own the
> routes. The NDA makes sense to me because it lets me know that the
Quote:
carrier and customer are serious in entering a business relationship,
something worthwhile, not a BS 5% markup on a route that has 15
> "carriers" in the middle but really belongs to AT&T. I'm all for open
Quote:
source, I think its great for software and problem sovling, but not
for the telecom industry(carriers) on a business level, I dont like it
> that some companies openly display their rates. It makes it difficult
Quote:
for me to sell my routes because I have to compete with "me too"
providers that dont actually own anything and cant guarantee quality,
> they dont share my overhead. Am I making sense here? At the end of the
Quote:
day all the minutes in the world are really terminated on a hand full
of carriers (mostly settlement traffic). VoIP in the early 90's was
> awesome because thats when people made real money, the barriers of
Quote:
entry were higher then and competition was respectable. I feel like I
have to sort through so many junk routes and companies now a days just
> to satisfy my demanding customers and this always gives voip a bad
Quote:
name. I remember buying Cisco 5300's for like $45k a pop, and never
ever having a customer even blink about the quality because on the
> other VOIP End was a carrier who also shelled out some dough and was
Quote:
serious about the relationship and made sure calls went thru. What do
you guys think? I'm not trying to hinder innovation or VoIP maturity
> here, I'm talking about the business aspect of things. I feel like the
Quote:
carrier market has gone to sh*t. Ok I'm done ranting and raving. Holla
at me if you want awesome routes at reasonable prices and are willing
> to sign an NDA ;)
Quote:
-ONE
On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 5:56 PM, Trixter aka Bret McDanel
I dunno, if people are providing a good service at a fair price, then
its in the providers interest to make it easier, not harder, for more
people to get that info and thus use that provider. The higher the
> hurdles are for a customer to work with the provider, the fewer total
Quote:
customers that provider is going to have.
I for example will not sign an NDA to get a rate list, so any provider
> that asks for one is immediately ruled out - and I am not the only
Quote:
one.
Even if the service is more expensive, if the quality, support, etc is
there, people will pay the higher price. Perhaps not everyone,
> but that
Quote:
gives providers the opportunity to have a tiered or multi-branded
setup.
For example a wholesale backend with 2 or more front ends, one with a
higher price, with only quality routes, functioning caller id, and a
> support team that can be contacted quickly and easily, and another
Quote:
that
is only for people that look at price and care little about any
of the
other stuff. They can even look like they are competing with
> themselves, and let the consumer decide what level of service they
Posted: Fri May 08, 2009 5:47 pm Post subject: [asterisk-biz] Dear Termination Providers,
Personally, if a carrier asks me to sign an NDA that would
be my first sign to stay away. I'd still do it just to see
what their prices are - but it does put me off and I am far
less likely to purchase.
9 times out of 10 those who ask for NDA do so because they
have something to hide. Whether it's bad pricing or worse.
I don't really care what the reason is - what I do care
about is that it's a waste of my time. If all I want is to
"shop around" for better carriers I don't want to have to
sign a bunch of NDAs to do so. It's annoying and pointless.
So the bottom line is: NDAs keep legit customers away.
Don't do it unless you actually need to.
From: SIP <sip@arcdiv.com>
Subject: Re: [asterisk-biz] Dear Termination Providers,
To: "Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion" <asterisk-biz@lists.digium.com>
Date: Friday, May 8, 2009, 1:31 PM
To some degree, carriers want to protect their pricing
structures
because it's an integral part of their competitive
business model. It's
a bit the way most retail stores will toss you out on the
curb if you
wander in with a notebook and start writing down the prices
of their items.
However, the flip side of that argument is that, if
you're REALLY able
to compete in the market, you shouldn't be afraid that
your prices are
known by any and everyone. Sure, there's the chance
that Bob the
mom'n'pop carrier down the road might undercut you
for a tenth of a cent
or so on a highly desirable route, but if the ONLY think
you're selling
is price, you may as well pack up shop and find another
business.
Carrier routes are a commodity market. Price simply cannot
be the only
area in which you compete -- in fact, it probably
shouldn't be your
number one priority regardless. VoIP never gets bad press
because of its
price. It gets bad press because of quality, customer
service,
misleading or hidden contractual clauses, difficulty of
setup, or any
number of things that you simply can't put in an NDA
(and couldn't
enforce secrecy upon, even if you tried).
Signing an NDA doesn't mean really anything about
whether or not your
customer is truly interested. Hell... anyone with a pen and
20 seconds
of free time can sign an NDA. The only thing it
(nebulously) protects
from is you gathering rates from providers and telling
company X down
the road that you can beat their rates because you've
seen them
recently, and yours are better. I've signed numerous
NDAs in the last
half a decade with companies whose rates and terms were
laughable. It
seemed from their terms that they were hardly serious about
building a
serious business relationship, so I'm not sure I buy
the argument than
an NDA in some way delineates between the serious and the
non-serious
businesses.
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