[asterisk-biz] Free DIDs

[Alex Balashov]

Pascal Bruno wrote:

> True, a friend of mine experienced that. His vonage service was  
> suspended for excessive use.  Even he had an "unlimited" plan.

The problem is that in VoIP, selling anything "unlimited" while the VoIP 
structural picture continues to be very highly PSTN-centric (which it 
will continue to be for quite some time yet) is a losing proposition.

But it is a requirement of marketing to do so, as long as your 
competitors are doing it--or, at least, claiming to do it, it doesn't 
really matter which.  So, maybe Bret is right;  if there were a strict 
and comprehensive regulatory ban on claiming anything is "unlimited," 
ever, that might go some way toward solving that problem.

Personally, I don't think there's a problem here.  It's enough for 90%+ 
of customers 90%+ of time since they never hit the threshold, much as 
with ISPs.  Any kind of business that deals in high volumes of variable 
transactions has to make trade-offs that lead to a Pareto-optimal[1] 
outcome.  You'll never please everyone, yet competition necessarily 
pares things down to a lowest common denominator in the discursive space 
of marketing.

Nobody is five-9s[2], nobody's SLA is worth a crap, and nobody's "more 
bars in more places" or "always on" has any empirical validity from an 
engineering perspective.

Every system of social and productive relations creates crosses to bear. 
  The interplay of "marketing" with competition is one of the 
better-known crosses of capitalism we have to hoist up the hill.

-- Alex

[1]  Otherwise known by names such as "the 80/20 rule."

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

[2]  Except, perhaps, the ILECs, who have had a few decades to work
      on this in technology stacks we now consider "legacy," and also
      face a tremendous regulatory mandate to provide that level of
      availability.

-- 
Alex Balashov - Principal
Evariste Systems
Web    : http://www.evaristesys.com/
Tel    : (+1) (678) 954-0670
Direct : (+1) (678) 954-0671
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