[Asterisk-biz] ITSP Rant

[Yair Hakak]

<rant>
you know what, forget reliability, forget support, all that good stuff.
If voicepulse thinks they can raise rates by more than 35% (from $8 to
$11) ON 2 DAYS NOTICE without grandfathering in your old clients, and
think this is acceptable, then they shouldn't be in the ITSP business,
and they shouldn't be running a corner grocery store either, because
that kind of rate hike for any product is unnaceptable. Couple this
with the fact that we are in an industry where we are used to prices
going down, not up, and you have some horrible business practices.

my sneaking suspicion is that they were cross-subsidizing, i.e. using
revenue from outgoing minutes to offer lower rates on DID's, hoping
people wouldn't buy just origination and do their termination with
voicepulse as well. However, talk about rate whores aside, there's no
way in hell i'd pay voicepulse 2.9 cents a minute when the going rate
is under 1.5. That's just ridiculous. Enough people probably figured
this out and started using a different provider for outgoing, causing
them to lose money on incoming.

I, for one, am taking my DID's elsewhere. 

</rant>

-yair

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 23:07:41 -0800, Robert Goodyear <me at jrob.net> wrote:
> 
> On Mar 29, 2005, at 10:19 PM, alex at pilosoft.com wrote:
> >
> > b) There's very low barrier to entry, thus lots of lemonade stand ITSPs
> > with a server at a ghetto-colo-of-the-month facility reselling a
> > reseller
> > of a reseller.
> >
> 
> I think you're right, there: perhaps while the intent to offer a solid
> product is there, the dedication to ensuring the upstream provider's
> network (IP or Telco) is legitimate is being lost by the desire to
> compete against the rate whores.
> 
> 
> >> Here's the thing: Customer Relationship Management is not difficult.
> >> It
> >> requires very little overhead to build a relationship with a customer
> >> in
> >> such a way that those customers become that company's evangelists and
> >> stick around for the long run. When things level out, it's going to
> >> come
> >> down to where the customers have gravitated that determines the
> >> lifespan
> >> of an ITSP. And customers will gravitate AWAY from a provider that
> >> thinks customer service should only be directly proportional to cost
> >> per
> >> minute. I firmly do NOT buy the argument that because minutes are
> >> being
> >> offered at such a steep discount, you're on your own for support.
> > Actually, *that* part is not wrong. You are buying wholesale service -
> > you
> > shouldn't really expect handholding similar to one that Vonage (say)
> > provides (or should provide anyway) to a grandma with a SIP adapter.
> 
> I am not talking about end-user support; sorry if I didn't make that
> clear... I am talking about support requests like: "the ten DIDs you
> promised me 45 days ago are still not provisioned" and "the DID that
> worked for three months now rings disconnected." You know, stuff that
> would infuriate *my* end user if I had the balls to resell services
> that are supposed to be ready for prime time.
> 
> > Note: Support is not customer service. While I don't think its
> > unreasonable to have little to no *support* (as in, people who will
> > tell
> > you how to configure your asstricks) - actual customer service is far
> > more
> > important for a wholesale customer than retail.
> 
> Right. Clarified above. Still just talking about ticketable items like
> sales provisioning, failure reports, et al.
> 
> >> I'll sign off with a quote from one provider's sales page; the place
> >> where one customarily *begins* the process of wooing clients.
> >>
> >> "Don't waste our time trying to get the costs down if you are not
> >> going
> >> to do a higher quantity. You will be wasting your time as well."
> > That's also a testament to sad state of industry. People take the
> > cheapest
> > offer and complain when their service is down. Yet, when you tell them
> > "why did you choose the company that does not have a merchant account,
> > that you can't find the last name of the owner, and hosted in a
> > ghettocolo" - all I get are blank stares and "but but they were 0.01c
> > cheaper than you".
> 
> Counterpoint: when will some smart providers realize they could charge
> a premium for reliability or, heck, educated technical sales staff who
> take ownership of wholesale customers in their "territory" and manage
> the issue resolution process internally. I, for one, would pay for
> that. VoIP is offering such steep discounts below traditional voice
> networks that there would seem to be a lot of room to satisfy both
> worlds; that of the provider needing to make a profit and the
> implementer needing to sell a product that can be reasonably relied
> upon while being competitive to PSTN.
> 
> Again, I say enough of the rate whores and let's see someone shine
> here. The bar is VERY low. I spent the last 10+ years of my life
> working in the branding/product development world, and I see this as
> such a ripe sector to take a midsize player to the top simply with
> perception management and customer relationship building. It would be
> so easy for David to stomp Goliath, if David were to just wake up and
> get [him|her] self a Chief Marketing Officer or Product Development
> person and throw some effort into breaking through.
> 
> 
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