[Asterisk-Users] Anyone noticed Voipjet voice quality problems?

[Rich Adamson]

> > Or maybe a couple of us should just get together and start 
> > our own company. One that explicitly places quality above 
> > quantity.  Anyone remember when businesses operated this way?!
> 
> This is not a bad idea at all -- and something that's been discussed in
> off-list emails.  I think it's entirely feasible to pass wholesale
> services through to the asterisk community.  Most providers are
> reselling the likes of L3 or Focal, and I don't believe they'd turn down
> legitimate business.  I started a local ISP the same way a few years ago
> -- monthly minimum was $500 at $7/channel for dialup.  I got commitments
> from 75 users, got $100/each from 60 and the charter members got dial-up
> at cost for as long as the thing was going.  Anyone?  How's L3 wholesale
> pricing?

Based on previous postings, it sounds like L3 won't even talk to anyone
that can't commit to millions of minutes (or some other very large
amounts). Given the rates published by some of the more recognized
itsp's, I'd guess their costs are roughly $0.01/min based on some
minimum level of commitment.

Marketing / selling voip to non-technology-oriented people is very
different from doing the same with technology people. If the service
is sponsored (sold) to the end users via selling an * system into a
business account, the sales effort is obviously a lot less then trying
to generate the same level of interest/commitment with home owners and 
sip adapters.

The entire marketing/sales functions are very interesting to watch in
terms of how people react to those words. Example, lots of people commit
to 500 - 1000 minutes of cellular time (in the US), and they don't have a
clue what their real monthly costs are or how much they are leaving on the
table. Many really believe they have 500 to 1000 minutes of free long
distance, when in fact its costing them substantially more then $0.05/min
for their actual usage.

The bottom line seems like those of us on this list are highly oriented
towards technology and therefore have an interest in finding the least
cost itsp. But, starting and supporting a profitable itsp operation is
rather different from starting an isp business. The impact that quality
has on an itsp operation is significantly different then an isp business
(as we can see from the problems with many existing itsp's).