[asterisk-biz] RE: If money is not a considerationwho givesthebest SIP termination??

[Steve Totaro]

Jean-Michel Hiver wrote:
>
>>> That's 13.8 minutes per call. Pretty good going for a call center! 
>>> It's probably tech support, I suspect mass phone marketing as a much 
>>> lower ACD than this =)
>>
>> Yes, we do all inbound at the moment from direct response marketing, 
>> so they are inbound sales calls from interested customers.
>>
>> We are soon going to offering a gift to our customers.  A 500 
>> minute/mo calling card which will skyrocket our minute usage and DS3 
>> trunks.  I really don't want this traffic on the DS3 feeding the call 
>> center and since it is a calling card, it costs twice (cost and 
>> channel) as much to terminate the call (trunk to trunk).
>>
>> Is there anyone out there that offers hosted calling card apps with 
>> an API to tie into our business logic and databases?  The real 
>> motivation in seeking VoIP alternatives is the calling card service 
>> but if the savings prove significant all other things being equal, 
>> then the call center would logically follow.
>
> Why would you want hosted calling cards than hosting the application 
> in house yourself? Rolling out a calling card app isn't too hard with 
> Asterisk + AGI, the trouble you're going to have is scaling it up 
> properly. Mind you, FastAGI is kind of OK at this.
>
I setup the calling card system for the US Embassy information service 
in Dakar Senegal.  Calling card stuff is trivial.  I just don't want the 
calling card stuff crossing the boundaries or using my trunks that are 
the bread and butter of the company, the call center, sales and 
support.  If I could co-lo it somewhere in a one or two U server in 
someone's rack at a carrier hotel and get good LAN/SIP to TDM price and 
quality or have it totally hosted, then It is one less thing to worry 
about.  Time is money as they say.  My time is certainly worth more than 
a few dollars an hour.

>> Quintum makes AWESOME boxes.  We use several of the TenorAX models in 
>> our setup for station side stuff.  I am glad you mentioned this since 
>> I knew the feature sets of their other products but didn't put 
>> together the two as an option until you brought it up.  This may very 
>> well be the best avenue to explore.
>
> Glad to be of use...
>
>
>> We have a pretty decent rate right now, I am just fishing and 
>> exploring other options but I do not really see the savings vs risk 
>> realized.  Fractions of pennies add up quickly on this scale but 
>> potential lost revenue adds up quicker.  VoIP migration would free up 
>> a great deal of servers for other tasks and be fairly trivial since 
>> we are running a heavily modified version of Asterisk.
>
> You're using asterisk on that scale? Wow, that's pretty good to know. 
> I've tried using Asterisk for wholesale for a loooong time but always 
> had trouble scaling it up. Plus, the H323 stacks are pretty bad 
> (progress indication codes are all messed up, early audio is random at 
> best, and it has stability issues & deadlocks too) so it didn't really 
> work out.
>
I only do SIP.  H323 and MGCP in asterisk are way to buggy for my 
blood.  IAX is cool for WAN trunking but I try to stick with SIP/ULAW only.
> Apparently you're better than me at doing this =)
>
> Cheers,
> Jean-Michel.