[Asterisk-biz] Startup

[Kevin J Taylor]

Thanks for the input, this will get me moving in the right direction.

Race Vanderdecken wrote:

>Honestly?
>
>Money.
>
>You can't do it easily without about $2500-$5000. $10,000 makes it
>simple. $25,000 and vendors will help you. Anything less then $15,000 in
>cash and most vendors are not going to want to help you. Handholding is
>expensive for vendors. They need to be able to make a profit. If you
>have to arrange credit then they might be slow to help because they know
>it takes time to get money for VoIP.
>
>1. You need to educate yourself on PSTN termination costs and DID
>numbers. 
>
>2. Get a copy of Newton's Telecom Dictionary.
>
>3. Create a business Plan. 
>	What do you want to do with your business? Make money? 
>	Are you going to sell calling cards or rent phones on a table in
>a coffee shop?
>
>4. Your comment about "Preferably one that can call PSTN phones " sounds
>like you want to be a "minutes" carrier. That means you create put a
>VoIP Gatekeeper and Gateway in an Area Code and sell access to that Area
>Code / LATA (see the need for the Newton's Telecom dictionary yet?)
>
>	Selling "minutes" means you contract with a guy in another area
>code and the two of you agree to terminate calls to/from the PSTN for
>each other. By Area Code I also mean different countries.
>
>5. If you are running a coffee shop with phones so people can call back
>to their motherland then you can use Asterisk to connect all the VoIP
>phones to the internet. And use Asterisk to connect calls from other
>Internet Countries to the PSTN.
>
>
>You could do it without money, but then you would not make much. You
>need computers, phones, gatekeepers, gateways, DID's, PRI's, T1's and
>lots of things to move enough calls through the system to make any
>money.
>
>T1's cost about $600 a month, plus installation and equipment. That
>would give you "24" telephone lines into your office that you can
>compress into about 100 calls.
>
>You can use a rack of Pentium 4's to do routing and the billing and the
>databases. Use Linux and mysql (LAMP) and work from the bottom up for
>about $2500.
>
>Race "The Tyrant" Vanderdecken
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com
>[mailto:asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Kevin Taylor
>Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2005 4:50 PM
>To: Asterisk-Biz at lists.digium.com
>Subject: [Asterisk-biz] Startup
>
>Hello all,
>
>I am relatively new to Voip.  I was wondering if anyone could point me 
>in the right direction as to what is required to get a voip business up 
>and running.  Perferablly one that can call ptsn phones.  This question 
>is vague I know.  Thank you for your help.
>
>
>
>
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