Hello,

Can someone please explain what are the requirements to start a VOIP business from scratch. We plan to have resellers under us and no direct customers. What would be an approximate budget to start with?

Thanks

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Do you mean a premium subscription?

Do you mean a premium subscription?

No, he is subscribing to this thread to see what is said. Simply posting in a thread subscribes you to it.


/subscribed too :)

This has been discussed before, you might talk to the guys at icall.com and see how expensive it really is if you're serious about it.


Also... subscribed :D

Get a server with a PBX software on it.

Route DID to this static IP.

Enjoy VoIP.

Atleast this is my understanding after 5 minutes of searching.

Rough estimate would be 500-1000 USD for startup. This depends on how much you commit towards your DID rates.

/subscribe :)

You'll need a "voip switch" to handle the billing/terminating to your end users. There are some software based solutions as well as hardware solutions.

There is a free voip switch out there that supposidly works fairly well, but i've yet to test it. There is some paid solutions like 'voipswitch', but it costs anywhere from $5,000 - $15,000 for a decent deployment. If you're wanting to go with hardware solutions, you best have bank around for one of these.

If you're targetting people that get a lot of inbound calls but minimal outbound, you can signup with http://www.didforsale.com, they will sell you 20 channels for ~$9/m and will allow you unlimited inbound calling.

As for outbound minutes, there is a few providers in NY that will sell you US based minutes for a half cent each.

Francisco

/subscribe :)

you could just click "tread tools, subscribe" so the rest of us dont get notified about all those who don't how to use a forum ... :p

you could just click "tread tools, subscribe" so the rest of us dont get notified about all those who don't how to use a forum ... :p

I think it was done for the "lol" factor. ;)

There is a free voip switch out there that supposidly works fairly well, but i've yet to test it. There is some paid solutions like 'voipswitch', but it costs anywhere from $5,000 - $15,000 for a decent deployment. If you're wanting to go with hardware solutions, you best have bank around for one of these.



The free one is called Asterisk2Billing but if your completly new to VoIP then you'd better start with the paid version, Star2Billing which starts at about 1000 euro. But personally I recomend that you should research as much as possible before getting into the VoIP industry.

/subscribes also.

I think it was done for the "lol" factor. ;)

:D Lets keep the discussion going. Would love to see great inputs coming in.

A2B is painful on the eyes. If you're looking to offer phone cards and things like that, A2B works fine with resellers even, but if you're wanting to become a transport provider (eg. people buy full DID's from you, etc), then you'll need a voip switch.

I can't seem to remember the one I was playing with a few months back, but if I do i'll be sure to bring it up :)

Francisco

You can see the demo of A2B at there own website: http://www.asterisk2billing.org/cgi-bin/trac.cgi/wiki/Demo

About voip, i don't know much about it seems to good to be true paying a few hundred for a switch doubt that the switch's call rate is free.

You have to pay the normal switch rates + your fee, so when using voip rates you might get 1/3 of the money,

Correct me when i'm wrong

As someone who is in the industry and would say is established i would like to provide my input.

Before i continue. Elastix and Freepbx is not viable, nor is it for long term (from personal experience)

As with any Voip company the biggest thing we found for us was Billing. Now there are many billing scripts out there that are free. However we could not get them to work or were not reliable. We tried for months to get Asterisk2Billing to work however we gave up.

Our cliental range from universities up and down the country to Corporate customers who use in excess of 100,000 minutes per month. Now when you get to that kind of usage, your profit per minute is not much. Maybe 5-10% above what you buy at. So if you have a billing system that isnt billing 6% of calls. That could be alot of you profit gone. Thats what we found with A2Billing.

Now it depends how big you want to go. You could get a direct interconnect with a big tier 1 carrier and be able to offer phone numbers directly from them (thats the cheapest) but there are alot of setup fees and minimum amounts of minutes per month you must push through them. We currently paid over £30,000 to get setup with BT, AT&T, Telefonica, Telstra & Telmax. (thats before we started paying for call termination)

Otherwise you can find a smaller wholesaler or a company that offers termination to smaller companies. You will find that there fees are slightly higher than having a direct interconnect but require alot less commitment and company status.

Now it sounds like you want to offer reseller accounts. Now guessing you dont have alot of money you need to do this the most economic way.

For billing. Try a company called: http://kolmisoft.com/ now there not free, but there software is extremely powerful and reliable. We have used them before moving over to more hardware means of billing (we still noticed a 2% error in billing, but at Residential and business that is expectable) But we process nearly 300,000 minutes a day. That is not. Thats 6000 minutes unbilled. They either offer the service as a paid software or they can host it for you. One of the features is that they allow you to create reseller accounts. The only downside is they don't do billing for times of the day. Or atleast they didn't last time i checked. (At wholesale this is paramount. We terminate directly in over 40 countries and thats a 120 different billing rates for a time of the day. Peak, Off-Peak & Weekend.)

You will also then need to provide DID's (phone numbers). Now if you had a direct interconnect with a big carrier they could offer you these. But by the sounds of your circumstance. I doubt your in this position yet.

Now a good place for DID's is didx.net

So the 3 main things you need to complete what your doing is the following:
Reliable Billing System with built in voice switch protocols + plus maybe webserver (such as the one from http://kolmisoft.com/)
A termination provider to send your minutes to. (Get a few to switch between for rates, quality and redundancy)
Incoming DID's (a good start is didx.net)

A word of advice, when looking for call termination. Ask for there ASR (% of connected calls. Higher the ASR the more reliable) Also get a test account. There are many (I mean many) wholesale companies who offer what looks like good rates, but have terrible quality. Whats the point of paying for a call when you can't hear them if it means for 2% more you get a high quality call? You have to weigh it up and see what works for you.

Any question, please ask.

Kind Regards,
Nathaniel

When I was doing research planning to form a VoIP company, I ran into alot of legal issues, but most of them were at my state level. Federally, there are minimal restrictions on VoIP (e.g. you must register with and report to the FCC's universal service fund. Keep in mind, this is if you're going to be providing residential service to US homes. I have no idea about the enterprise level services. We built out a decent Asterisk system and worked with a company (--I won't name them here--) to get decent pricing, keep in mind to watch the reputation of the company you choose to work with, as we were bit massively with our VoIP venture.

-Chris

I would like to point out that VTChris brings up a very valid point.

At least here in the UK (can not comment on other countries)

There are alot of legals to over come. For example, different associations to register with, licenses to aquire. Other things like 999 & 112 (US 911). Unlike the US, this works differently here in the UK and was a huge cost for us to implement. It also have a lot of technical difficulties.

I've checked out Star2Billing and it seems good. But a bit of a complicated layout.

Check solution4voip and voipswitch for complete voip solution.

I didn't read the entire thread, however providing VoIP services is a very expensive/costly thing to do when it comes to taxes. You have a pay a lot of different taxes based on where the customer is, 911 fees, etc.

It's really not worth it.

It's really not worth it.

Can I LOL at this?

Can I LOL at this?

Sure, I am. Any established business doesn't want more business to compete with :stickout: jk

Sure, I am. Any established business doesn't want more business to compete with :stickout: jk

I'm not in VoIP -- I worked at a VoIP company in the past though. If you're doing VoIP for 100 people -- obviously you're not most likely not paying the fees you're required to, however once you grow and people start to notice you -- you'll start to get fines, just as we did.

I'm currently setting up several VoIP systems with a common backend, so, here's an idea of what I've found so far:

Learn Asterisk. No matter what system or solution you wind up going with, there will be points where you have to work on the underlying systems to figure something out, and being able to navigate Asterisk's CLI and Linux command line makes expensive support calls much less frequent.

Realize that there are many components required to make it all work. Dialing system, billing system, web front-end, database system, hardware, upstream ITSP(s), telco interconnects, server monitoring/management, CALEA/USF/Other legal requirements (if you're in the US, other requirements for other countries), etc.
Not all of these are required, and that's probably the biggest decision you're going to encounter, and will determine how every step in building your systems progresses.

There's a premade system to handle every aspect of this. But.. you get what you pay for. Some systems start at $4k+ and still require thousands of dollars of customization to meet your specific needs. Some are on a revenue sharing model, and the developers are willing to work to customize, but you're out X% of your potential revenue. And some are free, but only maintained by 1 guy in India who offers the worst support in the world (if you can ever get ahold of him!)

You're not going to make as much money as you think. Sorry, but there's too much competition to have fat profit margins, unless you've got a good niche lined up. As an example, if, once you're going full-bore, you pay 0.01/min, and charge 0.03/min, and bill 100,00 minutes a month, you're going to be making, less that 0.01/min, $2,000/mo... and chances are your hardware costs and monthly overhead will eat that.

All that being said, there are still opportunities out there to make a decent income hosting VoIP services, if you play to YOUR strengths, have a solid business plan, make intelligent choices about your strategic partnerships, and cater to a profitable niche or 2.

Good luck!

All-in-all, VoIP requires more work than just throwing together a server and screaming "Come and get it." This has left the market relatively "un-polluted," for the time being, until the regulations on the service change, which is not likely to happen any time soon. It's really a hostile market aswell. Any time you threaten the telco's business, you have a chance of getting bit hardcore. Just keep that in mind.

i am a voip reseller and web hosting seller.
I also searched to start my own voip company, but I didn't have so much money to start a big company. and it's not a good idea to start a company under another company.
Many voip companies provide FREE calls to many destionations to attract people to their company. but if you are under one of those companies, they don't allow you to do it.
They charge you for each minute of call.

You need to start big for VOIP business.

Hey Guys,

This is not just technical aspects, All interconnected Voice Over IP providers in the United States, are required to get FCC FRN and get 499 Filer ID as well as submitting annual and Quarterly reports of 499a and 499q forms, even if your Universal Service Fund Contribution is bellow $10000 you are considered de minimis but you still have to file, for 499 filer ID you need to maintain a Washington DC Point of Contact for the FCC, and these are all mandatory since 2006

Resellers should also follow these rules, there are other aspects as CALEA compliance that small providers don't need to comply, but it depends on number of clients, there are also some other mandatory stuff like E911 access and registration, for US Customers if you give them a DID number, Also some states requires filing with local authorities as well,

in 499 Filer ID forms with the FCC you have to clearly indicate which states you are providing the service,

And if you say oh my , this is the Internet, refer to the regulatory changes, as of 2006 all VoIP providers that provide access to or from PSTN should follow those above rules.

/subscribe.

This is something I am actually looking in to as well.

Hey would VOIP-MS reseller qualify. what are the thoughts about them? can they be used to make "bank" they seem to have a resellers prog.

I have to add more questions and thoughts.
i wanted to edit my post but can not


Is it possible to join a provider (eg. reseller) to build up a portfolio of clients and as "scaling" of that portfolio grows take that portfolio of clients to a new and greater platform. I can see the answer as NO because the reseller may not release the portfolio of clients, but what can be done?

The question here is;
is it possible for a "Joe/Joie" entry level startup method? I ask the "scale up method"?

I understand a number of "JACKs-persons unknown" that are in the business are going to say NO or going to suggest Failure. However I am trying to Think outside the box.

I would like to say thanks to the members/post I read that shared some outstanding information about VOIP startup.
nobel prize winners- eg. CymraegWalesHosting/VTChris/DruRoland and others.

well said; vt-chris; All-in-all, VoIP requires more work than just throwing together a server and screaming "Come and get it." :) :)

You need to start big for VOIP business. is this the only way?



NOTE TO FORUM OWNER/MOD!
get "vb thanks" implemented.
Expand on the edit time.

You'll need a "voip switch" to handle the billing/terminating to your end users. There are some software based solutions as well as hardware solutions.

There is a free voip switch out there that supposidly works fairly well, but i've yet to test it. There is some paid solutions like 'voipswitch', but it costs anywhere from $5,000 - $15,000 for a decent deployment. If you're wanting to go with hardware solutions, you best have bank around for one of these.

If you're targetting people that get a lot of inbound calls but minimal outbound, you can signup with http://www.didforsale.com, they will sell you 20 channels for ~$9/m and will allow you unlimited inbound calling.

As for outbound minutes, there is a few providers in NY that will sell you US based minutes for a half cent each.

Francisco

Can you suggest some USA/CAN outbound provider ?

So as far as all of the legal worries go and the different fees taxes etc, would a VOIP reseller also run into these?

If you are newbie with a limited budget, Asterix2Billing is a great place to start.

All that is required is a good pro who knows in and out of a2b. They can get the whole system setup with config within few hours.

Following is the simple outline to get started.

1. Rent a VPS from www.vps.net or www.linode.com

2. Install A2B

3. Buy Termination from broadvox.com (its jus a example. If someone needs extensive list let me know)

4. Buy DIDs from didx.net

5. Configure both back in the A2B

6. As far as calling card is concerned, its quiet simple once you have purchased your DID from didx

7. Your customers will now be able to place calls from a open source sip client / ip phone / calling card / call back or can be used as wholesale



Now lets look at level 2.

Once you have enough customers, you need to upgrade to a dedicated server. In our case, if you go with vps.net or linode, its easy without a downtime as these are cloud models so you can increase resources as your call volume goes up. This should work great for upto 250 concurrent calls.

Please note 250 concurrent calls means, you could be running smooth upto 1000 retail customers. As for wholesale, its just 250 customers as its pre assumed wholesale will be pushing traffic 247.



Now there are few things you should be extremely careful about.

1. Call Termination. > Never go for the lowest priced provider. Most likely to suffer from a poor qos and asr. Insist on Higer ASR and Lower PDD.

2. DO NOT purchase for very large credits. Always start small, ensure the providers routes are good.

3. You need not purchase all routes from a single provider. You could purchase multiple routes from multiple providers and setup the route plan in a2b for LCR which would route based on the metrics set such as call quality and rates depending on the usage.



Now this should be perfect to get started or to experiment with the market.

If anyone's looking for help in setting up a complete VoIP server, buying routes / did's or a dedicated tech, buzz me on PM.

PS - I have been with the VoIP industry for over 9 years :)

Can you suggest some USA/CAN outbound provider ?

What's your call volume?

I have to agree and disagree with techiways1 points of view.

Generally speaking he is correct regarding the setup. Just make sure you stay away from something called grey routes. The majority of the easy access wholesale market is grey. From someone who specializes and deals with multiple tier 1's daily, pushes over 60 million minutes/month. I know what i am talking about here.

There is also alot of scammers out there. MAKE SURE EVERYTHING IS TIGHT! Infact actually we are launching a new service and yesterday we lost over £5,000 in 3 hours. Our engineers forgot to turn off registrations and we had users created. Funded there account via paypal using stolen accounts and then called premium rate numbers in Africa. Lets just say there was some fallout this morning.

THERE IS A LOT OF THIS GOING ON! THINK THAT IS A LOT? YOUR WRONG! We have worked with companies who have lost £50,000 in a day.

No Paypal! I am being serious. From either a paying point of view. Or a selling point of view (especially selling point of view). Use other means each card payments. You might say whats the point they can still do charge backs. True they can. But its much harder. Especially if you only allow bank card payments not credit cards.

Get yourself 2 or more routes.

Now techiways1 said never go for the lowest price. Now this is debatable and for someone who negotiates Tier 1 Direct routes at least weekly I can quite happily say.... did you know that over 60% of direct routes are cheaper than greys. However most people do not know that.

DIDX.NET.... STAY AWAY. Any one who uses DIDX does not take there business serious. DIDX is a wholesale exchange where international sellers can sell there numbering. No you might think that sounds like a great idea. However what happens if the company providing the numbers... they go bust. Stop selling via DIDX or have major technical issues. Now what are you going to tell your customers? You are out in the dark. DIDX do not know. Because its not a problem with them. Also DIDX is very expensive for most international numbering. Also it add latency jumping around your network. Also sellers have to limit the amount of minutes each DID can receive. Why? There is no point.


Did you know? A tier 1/2 provider (such as us... not a sales pitch... just saying. We are tier 1 provider here in the UK. Tier 2 international) receives a small payment per minute on every call on every number hosted on our network. Now currently we have our own dedicated numbering ranges in over 110 different countries. Generally speaking (if you exclude toll free). We get paid a small amount every time we receive a call.

I think alot of people see VoIP as the next all get involved web hosting boom. It's NOT! It takes serious planning. Serious provision. Most of all it takes money. Alot of Money!. A2Billing is a good way to start. (if you do calling cards and your profit is 2x your buy rate). If you plan to do wholesale then you need a better billing system as your profit may only be 2-5% of what you are buying at. Trust me on that. Or your accounts will not be balancing.

Codec conversions. If you want to maximize service usage. Then stick with one codec. Most greys prefer G729 as it keeps the quality high. Bandwidth. Downside? Simple not TDM/PSTN quality. Also can not except fax. You either want G711a/u (also known as a/ulaw). If you swap from one codec to another. You can get your concurrent call potential by a third usually as you have to convert a call from one format to another in realtime. Also with g729 conversion.... you need to pay about $10 per call license for the codec conversion

My word of advice after all that..... Take it slowly and plan. Carefully look at things you wouldn't think of. EG Network. Remember Telecoms these days (Even at Tier 1 level) is VoIP. So has the same limitations as servers, data network etc. If it is a serious company. They will have several interconnect locations for back up. Do they offer 24/7 telephone NOC support. They have an SLA.

If you want any more questions answered.... just ask.

All the best for now.

If you are newbie with a limited budget, Asterix2Billing is a great place to start.

All that is required is a good pro who knows in and out of a2b. They can get the whole system setup with config within few hours.

Following is the simple outline to get started.

1. Rent a VPS from www.vps.net or www.linode.com

2. Install A2B

3. Buy Termination from broadvox.com (its jus a example. If someone needs extensive list let me know)

4. Buy DIDs from didx.net

5. Configure both back in the A2B

6. As far as calling card is concerned, its quiet simple once you have purchased your DID from didx

7. Your customers will now be able to place calls from a open source sip client / ip phone / calling card / call back or can be used as wholesale



Now lets look at level 2.

Once you have enough customers, you need to upgrade to a dedicated server. In our case, if you go with vps.net or linode, its easy without a downtime as these are cloud models so you can increase resources as your call volume goes up. This should work great for upto 250 concurrent calls.

Please note 250 concurrent calls means, you could be running smooth upto 1000 retail customers. As for wholesale, its just 250 customers as its pre assumed wholesale will be pushing traffic 247.



Now there are few things you should be extremely careful about.

1. Call Termination. > Never go for the lowest priced provider. Most likely to suffer from a poor qos and asr. Insist on Higer ASR and Lower PDD.

2. DO NOT purchase for very large credits. Always start small, ensure the providers routes are good.

3. You need not purchase all routes from a single provider. You could purchase multiple routes from multiple providers and setup the route plan in a2b for LCR which would route based on the metrics set such as call quality and rates depending on the usage.



Now this should be perfect to get started or to experiment with the market.

If anyone's looking for help in setting up a complete VoIP server, buying routes / did's or a dedicated tech, buzz me on PM.

PS - I have been with the VoIP industry for over 9 years :)

Interesting, have always wondered how VOIP works. Would be great if we could hear from more people.

My friends & customers are saying "These days VoIP businesses are not profitable"

It depends on a lot of factors. In my opinion.

1) Redundant systems.
2) Do not go cheap on hardware.
3) Do not use a VPS.
3) Go with something that you know you will have support for. While A2Billing is good if you need support the forums can take time.

It depends how big you want to be $500.00 - $1000.00 is a joke. If you are serious you need 10k-20k to get you through the first few months. Get a good host and some one that will work with you if there are issues. As we have learn you get what you pay for. We are currently at 60 Hudson and we spend 2-3k a month just on the space and internet. Over all you get what you pay for. We use Enswitch (enswitch.com) which is not cheap but their support is top notch.

Good luck on your venture.