I am interested in starting a VoIP company. I have a few questions that I hope you guys can answer:

1) We all know that VoIP companies have some faults such as:

- Unable to connect during peak times. For example, holidays such as christmas or new years.

- Jiterriness

- Disconnecting. I'm with italkbb and I have had a few disconnections making local calls.

How do you eliminate these problems? Are they easy, or is it simply because the company is lazy, doesn't know how to set up, or doesn't want to invest in a better system?

2) Where can I get the information required to run a VoIP company? Or learn? Thanks.

The first problem is caused by overselling. Hard to avoid in the VoIP business since prices are getting very competitive.

The last two can be caused by about a million things. Like culprits are the network connections between the VoIP provider and user.

start at places like voxilla.com and pulver.com

from there you will see other sites mentioned and you can follow the links.

Try
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/How+to+start+the+next+Vonage

Calling card?
Sip wholesale?
IAX2+ sip wholesale?
Toll free?
Resident?
business?
Host PBX?


when you have a clear picture of what you really want to do i can send you more info on what compnay you can look into. We been doing VOIP for the last 6 years in us.

-paul

Are you planning on buying a switch? If so, do you plan to become a CLEC to interconenct with ILEC's, or are you planning to resell someone's service?

It has to do with infrastructure and overselling. Mostly overselling.

It has to do with infrastructure and overselling. Mostly overselling.

Sounds like the hosting business.

Good questions but even if there was a way to fix that can such a thing be guaranteed? I wonder...

I think you would need to spend quite heavily on infrastructure and some people already have. Also its not quite like hosting. People don't particularly like having their email or web sites down for even a short period, a telephony service has to be extremely robust.

Also look into how you are going to market this profitably. You have some of the toughest competition around (Skype, Vonage to name but a few) and some of the highest customer acquisition costs.

I'd look at selling as an affiliate for one of the larger guys first then if it looks a going concern, look at getting your own network and kit.

What is the viability of a VoIP company that offers free service, but plays an 10-second audio ad before connecting each call?

As for learning more, I think http://www.isp-planet.com might (might being the keyword) have some information on offering VoIP services. If not, I am sure there are some good books on the subject at Amazon.com.