[asterisk-biz] Amp'd Going the Way of Sun Rocket

[Matthew Rubenstein]

On Wed, 2007-07-25 at 20:52 -0400, Alex Pilosov wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Jul 2007, Matthew Rubenstein wrote:
> 
> > 	I pay less every month for my consumer VoIP service than I ever
> > did, or would now, for my call traffic. And that's not even counting
> > foreign calls, including ones to Europe and South Asia. Since it's flat
> > rate, I talk much longer internationally, even leaving the line open for
> > long business sessions.
> Sure.
> 
> And your provider is likely to be losing money on it.
> 
> I'm going to ask you this question, as you are in VoIP business. You know
> what is the *minimal cost* to terminate those calls (let's just say,
> access tariff domestically, and international LEC's charges for 
> international calls). Run your personal CDRs and see what is the *possible 
> profit margin* for your VoIP carrier.
> 
> Its not a sustainable model.


	I talk about 5000min:mo, which would cost me less than $25:mo
($0.005:min at huge volume and Tier1 termination). I do call foreign
numbers at the flat rate about 1-2% of the time, but that's not enough
to really matter, and one country I call has a much higher rate. I'm
paying about $30:mo, 15% profit, I'm probably well above average usage;
probably 20% is average, plus lots of people call foreign mobiles than I
do. Minus other operating costs and even USF tariff, but 20% is a good
margin to start with. And per-minute termination rates are dropping all
the time - but not my monthly bill.

	I'd trade my VoIP business (really voice features for network apps) for
theirs. But then I'd roll out the even more profitable voice apps to
their many customers. Which I expect they will do once the shakeout
makes competition on price practically impossible, and once they have to
face little "feature startups" instead of just basic carriage. For the
time being, the business is profitable, but it must be managed well.

	So I don't know if it's "sustainable" as in "zero risk forever", but
it's good right now, with the markets expanding very rapidly and
operating costs dropping, while the market is learning the value of
quality and features which will keep the bills in approximately the
$20-40:mo range, like practically all "essential" Internet services at
any OSF layer.


> -alex
> 
-- 

(C) Matthew Rubenstein