[Asterisk-biz] Starting a Calling Card Business $1000 - hiring an Intern

[Race Vanderdecken]

As to "hiring an intern" you might as well burn the money or give it to
charity. 

I can't imagine any business putting its future in the hands of an
intern. I have watched a couple of companies waste 6 months cause they
think they can do it in house or with cheaper labor (he says from his
soapbox.) 

A competent programming could have done the work in a month and they
could be selling their product.

Get a plan and then hire the right people, which may or may not be an
intern.

The economic principle is called "Opportunity Costs." This is the money
lost by not having the opportunity to make money. So the six months
worth of sales lost plus the labor money burned must be accounted for.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost

Yes it is open source and it is free to all who would like to have it,
but if you are building a serious business then you have to pay costs,
whether they are opportunity, hidden or real.

It amuses me to watch companies that are going to use Asterisk to get
rich selling telephone service but they never seem to have the money to
get started, if only they could get everything for free they could make
a bundle.

Race Vanderdecken

-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of ChitChat -
Info
Sent: 12 November 2004 14:32
To: Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-biz] Starting a Calling Card Business $1000

Off the top of my head, here are some other things to consider:

* tracking of payphone surcharges and remittances
* reporting functionalities - what's my profit, etc. How many cards have
been used?
* how accurate is the billing system. Trust me, the smallest error can
cost
you thousands of dollars. Prepaid cards mean that you can't track the
person
down and just say "give us some money for the free minutes we
accidentally
gave you"
* routing tables - how do you change the carrier on a
destination-by-destination basis based on price/quality.
* anti-fraud - can you block 'bad' people from hacking your box, trying
pin
combinations, blocking inbound numbers, blocking specific destinations?
* refill, pin creation, batch creation, batch cancellation, distributor
tracking, inventory tracking.

I think Asterisk is amazing and we are hiring an intern to invest
time/money
into and see what he/she can 'come up with' on Asterisk, but companies
that
charge tens of thousands to set up proprietary systems aren't worthless
just
yet. I think Asterisk will catch up with smart people writing the code,
but
there is still a way to go between 'class 4 switch' and Asterisk PBX. I
love
it though...

On 11/12/04 1:09 PM, "Steve Totaro" <stotaro at totarotechnologies.com>
wrote:

> If it's so easy then why pay $1,000?
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com
> [mailto:asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Rehan
Ahmed
> Sent: Friday, November 12, 2004 2:00 PM
> To: asterisk-biz at lists.digium.com
> Subject: [Asterisk-biz] Starting a Calling Card Business $1000
> 
> Dear All,
> 
> Setting up a calling card on asterisk is very easy.
>  
> Setup an asterisk box,
>  
> Buy DID numbers
>  
> Buy termination from a wholesale provider
>  
> Install the asterisk calling card software which is free
>  
> And you are up and running
>  
> If some one wants us to do it, we can do it for 999$
>  
> This will include installation of asteris, and software, and
generating
> the first 1000 
> cards, setting up the rate table, buying did, buying termination.
> 
> Rehan Ahmed
> Director Business Development
> 
> Super Technologies Inc.
> Super Technologies Inc.
> http://www.supertec.com - Technologies from tomorrow, TODAY!
> http://www.virtualphoneline.com - Get A US Phone Line ANYWHERE in the
> world. Start your Call Center.
> http://www.PhoneOpia.com - Pc to Phone Services.
> http://www.MySuperPhone.com - The NEXT Generation of Telephone.
> www.callkiosk.com - Small Call Centers Solutions.
> Http://www.ip-pabx.com - One World, One Number, One Pabx.
> http://www.SuperPhoneLD.Com - 3Cents State to State Long Distance.
> http://www.SuperPhoneLD.biz - 4 Cents State to State Long Distance &
> 1800 
> Service
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> 
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