[Asterisk-Users] DID VoIP trunk provider for metro Chicago, LA and/or Orlando.

[Carmi Weinzweig]

On 20 Jul, 2004, at 21:37, Steven Critchfield wrote:

> On Tue, 2004-07-20 at 15:58, Carmi Weinzweig wrote:
>> Chris -
>> 	In the real telephony world, one can buy a DID trunk without buying a
>> PRI. If one wants more than about 10 trunks (depending on provider), 
>> it
>> may be cheaper to buy a PRI instead of individual trunks.
>>
>> Having said that, most of these VoIP providers have their pricing 
>> model
>> exactly backwards (they seem to only want to compete with Centrex, not
>> with regular PBX services), in that they charge a lot for resources
>> that are freely available and cost them little (phone numbers), but
>> very little for scarce resources (call terminations) that cost them
>> much more.
>
> Cost isn't a determination of scarcity. Numbers are scarce in the fact
> that they get assigned out to a specific entity and for a time, it is
> associated with that single entity.  Phone lines for a VoIP provider
> though can be shared amongst the entire customer base.

To be clear, I was not talking about global resources, just in terms of 
those of an VoIP provider. Adding additional channels requires adding 
hardware (PRI card, CSU/DSU, possibly more CPU power) and takes more 
network bandwidth. Adding numbers (which are plentiful right until they 
are no long available) incurs no other cost (well, maybe a small 
ordering fee).

>
> A PRI circuit should be between $35 and $50 per channel, Split amongst
> 3-5 customers. Of course you have to then account for the data side of
> the network too.
>
> Last time we discussed with our telco pricing on DIDs, it was $4/month
> per 20 numbers. Anything more than a couple blocks required some
> justification. I think it was basically to make sure we wheren't 
> running
> some form of scam and moveing from number to number.

So, you are paying $.20 per number, in TN. Last I checked here in 
Sprint Local Territory, they were $0.10. My deal with AT&T Local 
Services in SF (a year or two ago) they bundled some and so we ended up 
paying about $0.01 per number.

/carmi

>
>> What I would like is to be limited as to how much of a scarce resource
>> (channels) I can use, but not be limited as to how much of a plentiful
>> resource (numbers) I can use.
>
>
>
> -- 
> Steven Critchfield <critch at basesys.com>