[asterisk-biz] Dear Termination Providers,

[Nitzan Kon]

Personally, if a carrier asks me to sign an NDA that would
be my first sign to stay away. I'd still do it just to see
what their prices are - but it does put me off and I am far
less likely to purchase.

9 times out of 10 those who ask for NDA do so because they
have something to hide. Whether it's bad pricing or worse.
I don't really care what the reason is - what I do care
about is that it's a waste of my time. If all I want is to
"shop around" for better carriers I don't want to have to
sign a bunch of NDAs to do so. It's annoying and pointless.

So the bottom line is: NDAs keep legit customers away. 
Don't do it unless you actually need to.

--
Nitzan Kon, CEO
Future Nine Corporation
http://www.future-nine.com/

--- On Fri, 5/8/09, SIP <sip at arcdiv.com> wrote:

> From: SIP <sip at arcdiv.com>
> Subject: Re: [asterisk-biz] Dear Termination Providers,
> To: "Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion" <asterisk-biz at lists.digium.com>
> Date: Friday, May 8, 2009, 1:31 PM
> To some degree, carriers want to protect their pricing
> structures
> because it's an integral part of their competitive
> business model. It's
> a bit the way most retail stores will toss you out on the
> curb if you
> wander in with a notebook and start writing down the prices
> of their items.
> 
> However, the flip side of that argument is that, if
> you're REALLY able
> to compete in the market, you shouldn't be afraid that
> your prices are
> known by any and everyone. Sure, there's the chance
> that Bob the
> mom'n'pop carrier down the road might undercut you
> for a tenth of a cent
> or so on a highly desirable route, but if the ONLY think
> you're selling
> is price, you may as well pack up shop and find another
> business.
> Carrier routes are a commodity market. Price simply cannot
> be the only
> area in which you compete -- in fact, it probably
> shouldn't be your
> number one priority regardless. VoIP never gets bad press
> because of its
> price. It gets bad press because of quality, customer
> service,
> misleading or hidden contractual clauses, difficulty of
> setup, or any
> number of things that you simply can't put in an NDA
> (and couldn't
> enforce secrecy upon, even if you tried).
> 
> Signing an NDA doesn't mean really anything about
> whether or not your
> customer is truly interested. Hell... anyone with a pen and
> 20 seconds
> of free time can sign an NDA. The only thing it
> (nebulously) protects
> from is you gathering rates from providers and telling
> company X down
> the road that you can beat their rates because you've
> seen them
> recently, and yours are better. I've signed numerous
> NDAs in the last
> half a decade with companies whose rates and terms were
> laughable. It
> seemed from their terms that they were hardly serious about
> building a
> serious business relationship, so I'm not sure I buy
> the argument than
> an NDA in some way delineates between the serious and the
> non-serious
> businesses.
> 
> 
> N.
> 
> -- 
> Neil Fusillo
> CEO
> Infinideas, inc.
> http://www.ideasip.com