[asterisk-biz] VoicePulse pricing encourages large number of accounts was: VoicePulse engaged in very dubious business practices

[Paul]

Let's see ....

The contract I have right now will get me backbone internet bandwidth at
$60/month per megabit once I reach the right volume.

I'll figure the average user will use about 64k per channel(I base that
on codec preference)

So my internet bandwidth cost is about $3.75 per channel

So I would ask Mister "sales department" if he is buying adequate
bandwidth at a much better price than I get.

I would never depend on a DID number from a provider that is depending
on average usage to stay low. When you sell wholesale you are getting a
different type of average user. What if your biggest wholesale buyers
are focusing on the small office PBX market? Open channel count will
rise dramatically during business hours.

I would consider myself fortunate if I was getting PSTN connectivity at
something like $10/month channel. If hardware was free maybe I would
sell that delivered over SIP at $15/channel.

By the way, I am looking for consulting work these days. Besides my
hardware and software skills, you can now see that I also know how to do
some simple math. Anybody looking for a linux geek who also knows how to
do things like break-even analysis should contact me offlist.

sales department wrote:

>Mike,
>
>Our wholesale price per DID is $5 which two channels of unlimited incoming
>calls.  If you need more channels then the cost is $2.50 per channel.  We
>don't charge for outgoing channels.  We make that up in the wholesale per
>minute cost.  I wonder if you are mistaking Voice Pulse's pricing on this?
>
><robb>
>
>on 6/2/06 1:59 PM, Mike Fedyk at mfedyk at mikefedyk.com wrote:
>
>  
>
>>They charge $11 per DID with a limit of 4 concurrent calls per account.
>>If you want to increase that, it is $20/mo per additional concurrent
>>call, so it becomes $31/mo to have 5 concurrent calls available.  This
>>encourages having each DID in a separate account.  Which makes managing
>>all of the accounts harder.
>>
>>Also, if you have a DID, each outbound call uses a channel that could be
>>used for incoming calls.  If you use all channels for outbound, you
>>won't receive any calls from the DID.  I have not used their service so
>>I don't know if they have done something to make having a lot of
>>accounts easy, but after looking at their pricing, I can understand why
>>he had a lot of accounts.
>>
>>I don't understand the logic of the limit of concurrent calls.  If you
>>are charging per minute (and they do for outbound calls) why not allow
>>use of as many channels as requested and make money on the minutes?
>>
>>I am not trying to attack anyone, but I would like to see if VoicePulse
>>has a response to this, and possibly change their pricing so they won't
>>have an incentive to have limits on calls.
>>    
>>
>
>  
>