[asterisk-biz] Dear Termination Providers,

[John Todd]

On Apr 24, 2009, at 2:56 PM, Trixter aka Bret McDanel wrote:

> On Fri, 2009-04-24 at 14:35 -0700, John Todd wrote:
>>   It is almost always contradictory to provider's best interests to
>> make their rate sheets easy to import or understand.   Here's a
>> document set that I wrote a while back in the hopes that I could beat
>> providers up into giving me the correct rate table data in a format I
>> could use:
>>
>>   http://www.loligo.com/asterisk/misc/rates/
>
>
> I dunno, if people are providing a good service at a fair price, then
> its in the providers interest to make it easier, not harder, for more
> people to get that info and thus use that provider.  The higher the
> hurdles are for a customer to work with the provider, the fewer total
> customers that provider is going to have.
>
> I for example will not sign an NDA to get a rate list, so any provider
> that asks for one is immediately ruled out - and I am not the only
> one.
>
> Even if the service is more expensive, if the quality, support, etc is
> there, people will pay the higher price.  Perhaps not everyone, but  
> that
> gives providers the opportunity to have a tiered or multi-branded  
> setup.
> For example a wholesale backend with 2 or more front ends, one with a
> higher price, with only quality routes, functioning caller id, and a
> support team that can be contacted quickly and easily, and another  
> that
> is only  for people that look at price and care little about any of  
> the
> other stuff.  They can even look like they are competing with
> themselves, and let the consumer decide what level of service they  
> want
> and get more customers.
>
> But then I am weird that way.
>
> -- 
> Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com     Bret McDanel
> pgp key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x8AE5C721


I agree, yes, that in theory competitive carriers would give you the  
prices up front.

But I've not met any of the big ones that will do that, or even the  
medium ones.

L3, XO, GLBX, Sprint, Verizon... nope.  You need to sign an NDA for  
rates.  Each of them has a significantly different format for handing  
out rate sheets, sometimes requiring referential lookups in up to four  
tables to get a price.  (If you've had contradictory experiences, I'd  
encourage you to post a URL containing those price lists so that  
everyone here can see them - after all, it's not under an NDA,  
right?  ;-)

And then, as mentioned elsewhere, each has their own concept of tiers  
(3 tiers? 5 tiers? 7 tiers? 9 tiers?).  But not NPA-XXX-X... rates.   
You have to do that on your own.  Oh... and by the way... many of them  
have different interpretations of those OCN decks.  And they won't  
tell you what theirs are.  It's a guessing game.

Why is this? My belief (which is based on painful experience) is that  
they will always overcharge by 3%-15% because of data slop, and they  
will make it as difficult as possible for you to argue the cost  
delta.  It's a way of bleeding the clueless.  If you're smart, you'll  
know how to catch them at this game.  If you're a sloppy carrier who  
doesn't care or thinks that it doesn't matter, they'll double their  
profit on you.


Anyway: as for my document above - anyone who wants to make comments,  
or update it with something like connection fees, just send me a .doc  
version back via email with your updates visible in a "track changes"  
mode, and I'll update the primary document and give it a new revision  
number, if your changes make sense and don't overburden the format.    
The transport format perhaps should really be XML, but that may be too  
much for the Excel jockeys that typically make these tables for each  
carrier, so I kept it as CSV to Keep It Simple.


PS: Why don't more carriers use OSP?  (http://www.transnexus.com/)  -  
TransNexus even was kind enough to contribute a module that's part of  
Asterisk as a default!  It solves SO many problems.

JT

---
John Todd                       email:jtodd at digium.com
Digium, Inc. | Asterisk Open Source Community Director
445 Jan Davis Drive NW -  Huntsville AL 35806  -   USA
direct: +1-256-428-6083         http://www.digium.com/