[asterisk-biz] Mobile Termination via GSM Gateways

[Steve Totaro]

Unlimited plans. Family plans with many shared minutes (base charge plus 
$10/mo per extra phone or SIM).

When I was in war torn West Africa, you could not get a land line in any 
way shape or form. I met with the Minister of Telecom for Liberia and he 
had a phone on his desk which ironically did not work (not surprising 
with all the bullet holes and total lack of power, although the building 
was very nice). GSM is the only thing that works there.

I suspect other areas with limited supplies of land lines or monopolies 
on PSTN connectivity create a very high price for service. I setup a 
call center for the US Embassy in Dakar Senegal and the cost of an E1 
from Sonatel (monopoly) was $3,000 per month just for the loop, 
comparable with a VSAT hookup!

It may not make sense in areas where a T1 costs a couple hundred bucks 
and minutes are ~$.01 per minute, but you have to think globally.

Thanks,
Steve Totaro

Douglas Garstang wrote:
>
> I was reading that if you want to terminate to cell phones, that 
> sending the calls through a GSM (or whatever technology is locally 
> available) gateway, is cheaper than sending the calls to the PSTN via 
> T1/E1, Analog.
>
> How is that?
>
> I’m not sure how these devices work anyway.
>
> Does the gateway appear as a regular cell phone to the mobile network?
>
> Would you just purchase an unlimited plan from the cell phone 
> provider? Is that how it works out cheaper?
>
> I also see specs saying that the devices support a certain number of 
> SIM cards. Why do you need SIM cards? Does each port on the gateway 
> appear as a separate mobile phone?
>
> Would that mean if your gateway supported 8 ports, you’d need to 
> purchase 8 unlimited mobile phone plans?
>
> Do ITSP’s generally terminate calls to cell phone networks via GSM 
> gateways or T1/Analog gateways? If they terminated calls via GSM 
> gateways, the calls should be pretty cheap, but I see that ITSP’s 
> published rates to cell phones are always a lot more expensive anyway.
>
> Doug.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com--
>
> asterisk-biz mailing list
> To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
>    http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz