[Asterisk-biz] Stumped on LD questions......

[alex at pilosoft.com]

On Fri, 21 Jan 2005, Paul wrote:

> What intrigues me so far is the wide range of prices I see for
> origination and termination. It looks like the range narrows as you grow
> into higher volumes. I am testing providers who require upfront minimums
> that range from $5 to $16. The US48 rates vary from .013 to .039 and I
> don't yet see any gain in quality or reliability for paying the higher
> rates. Funny thing is that you would expect the provider with a higher
> upfront minimum to give you the better rates but it is exactly the
> opposite with the 3 I am referring to here.
If you can't tell the difference in reliability, you are not their target 
client. My clients can tell the difference between 99% ASR and 90% ASR, 
and between faxes working 100% of time and 90% of time.

> Origination providers are equally confusing. A typical statement from
> support people is something like "We allow multiple simultaneous calls
> but we might limit that in the future." I can understand that they still
> need to get the software to the point where it will limit that. In the
> meantime they should go ahead and clearly state what will be allowed at
> what price. I want to know upfront what it will cost if my customer
> grows to the point where he needs to allow up to 12 incoming calls at a
> time. I can't place him with a provider that only charges $2/month for
> an "unlimited" local DID, currently allows lots of simultaneous calls
> but reserves the right to limit it to one someday and can't decide what
> he will charge people who need more than that.
Its kind of hard to make a workable pricing model in this day and age, but 
I agree with your sentiment. There's no such thing as unlimited, whether 
it is termination or origination or...

> I am trying to encourage a provider to address this need. Some of us
> lower-volume users need to know exactly where we and our customers
> stand. I'm sure there are lots of sohos who can get by just fine with *
> connected to an ata from vonage and a pots line. It might be a few more
> years before they need to have a number hunt across more than 2 lines
> and it might be at least that long before they would use enough minutes
> to get kicked off the (NOT REALLY) unlimited soho plan. The rest of us
> need to see something sane and concrete in a rate plan. Still waiting.
True enough.

-alex