Hmmmmm, makes sense.<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 9:11 PM, Trixter aka Bret McDanel <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:trixter@0xdecafbad.com">trixter@0xdecafbad.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="im">On Sun, 2009-08-16 at 20:27 -0400, Pascal Bruno wrote:<br>
> How come MagicJack is still around?<br>
><br>
<br>
</div>they no longer say unlimited, their TOS says 20 times average usage,<br>
and per someone on the inside average usage is 104 mninutes. So<br>
basically its $2/mo (prepaid up front) for 2000 minutes a month.<br>
<br>
In addition to that they do extensive LCR with highly questionable<br>
routes, they profit off the sale of the adapters. If you use the<br>
service for a couple months then walk away they still have your money.<br>
<br>
Ymax (parent company) bought out tigerjet or something who makes the<br>
chip that drives the magicjack adapter (you can use it for skype or<br>
anything else hte TJ adapters are good for). They also own a clec and I<br>
dont know if they are getting compensated for inbound or not, but they<br>
could be.<br>
<br>
When you call "international" they have fairly high rates compared to<br>
other providers.<br>
<br>
I also dont know how much of this is a loss leader to get market share.<br>
Skype offered free calling for a while. Google voice now offers free<br>
calling. Skype is about $3/mo for 10,000 minutes (they say unlimited<br>
then in the TOS define unlimited as 10,000 minutes).<br>
<br>
I do not know if they are operating under a pyramid type bubble now or<br>
not, because people pay up front it may be that some of the annual fee<br>
money is used for this months operating expenses, meaning once the<br>
growth stops at an ever increasing rate they will collapse. Then again<br>
it could be that they are profitable when you get into the totality of<br>
their revenue streams. I believe that they place advertisements in the<br>
dialer, and because they modified the way that the md5 hash is done you<br>
cant use standard sip software (unless you are clever, figure it out<br>
which is not hard with IDApro, and write a proxy). There is a perl<br>
proxy that exists but it forces all traffic to the same proxy, mine uses<br>
iptables to pass it to a perl script which does the magic that is<br>
required and sends it to whatever proxy was configured. This means that<br>
you can use standard sip stuff again. The other perl proxy that<br>
forwards stuff to the same sip proxy is out there somewhere, it was<br>
forwarded to me at one time after I did mine so I dont know where it is<br>
specifically.<br>
<br>
<br>
With all of that said, it is not hard to charge people $2/mo for 100<br>
minutes, that works out to about 2 cents a minute for the average<br>
customer which is quite profitable by in large. Please note that<br>
magicjack does not sell outbound telephone service (clever contract<br>
wording). They sell inbound service only. The outbound service is free<br>
and they can take it away at any time as a result.<br>
<div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
--<br>
Trixter <a href="http://www.0xdecafbad.com" target="_blank">http://www.0xdecafbad.com</a> Bret McDanel<br>
pgp key: <a href="http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x8AE5C721" target="_blank">http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x8AE5C721</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
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