[asterisk-biz] Experimental/new VoIP rate search engine.

[Nitzan Kon]

--- On Mon, 1/5/09, Alex Balashov <abalashov at evaristesys.com> wrote:

> A G.711u call takes about 80 kbps on the inbound media
> stream and on the outbound one once framing, padding and
> L2/L3 headers are factored in, as you well know.  A decent
> server doing Asterisk can handle a few hundred calls, so
> with every additional server doing 300 concurrent calls you
> are driving about an additional ~25 mbps in sustained
> bandwidth!  I mean sustained, not burst below the 95th
> percentile.  If you are paying, say, $40/meg on your
> commitment, as opposed to burst overages, that's another
> $1k/mo to handle another 300 calls, plus the amortised
> expense of a new $500 server.

Remember that at these bandwidth levels you can get MUCH
better deals than $40/meg. You can easily get half that
and probably a lot less.

> If your margins are that good (half a penny a minute) then
> you can probably afford to screw around.  Unfortunately, for
> most VoIP ITSPs the margins are much thinner, especially for
> wholesalers in domestic US48 LD.  If you're making
> 1/10th of a penny, you're only doing $5k/mo on 5 million
> minutes.  Out of that $5k you've got to pay your total
> colo expense, your marginal bandwidth cost on 110 calls (10+
> meg commitment), power, salary, and all other business
> expenses.

I agree. If your margins are that low proxying the media is
not a good idea. US48 per-minute is not good business for a
VSP unless it's just a loss leader for other business like
selling DIDs, international termination, etc.

> $.001 is a lot closer to the margin many ITSPs are making
> than $.005.

I don't know any residential ITSPs that sell below 1 cent
a minute. Even at 1 cent a minute your profit margin is
between $.002-.007 a minute depending on where the user is
calling. On average probably around $.004 or so. If you're
making only $.001 a minute then either you're buying too
high or selling too low. :)

Either way - residential US48 pay-as-you-go by itself is 
bad business. You cannot sustain a business on that alone
IMHO.

-- Nitzan
http://www.comparevoipproviderrates.com/