Is it possible you can offer a unlimited plan for resellers to sell?
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Is it possible you can offer a unlimited plan for resellers to sell?
No, I don't see this happening. It's something we thought about and debated a lot before announcing the pricing structure and determined it's just not viable.
Basically in telecom, every minute cost money. More or less, whoever owns the physical equipment serving a phone number gets paid for every call to it. So if you have AT&T and you call Verizon, Verizon is getting paid for every minute of the call by AT&T.
Usually there are more layers of resellers and it's a little more complicated than that. The provider that "owns" the phone number though is always getting paid.
How much they are getting paid varies depending on the area. As a general rule, larger cities are cheaper to provide service in than small areas. It can vary from fractions of a cent per minute up to 30 cents per minute in some areas.
VoIP providers (VOIPo, Vonage, and Packet8 all included) usually do not have equipment all over the country so we use partner carriers and basically lease phone numbers from them in order to have nationwide coverage.
These partner carriers charge us for the phone numbers by the minute as well. Yes, they are still getting paid on the backend when calls are received on those numbers. They still charge providers by the minute for the most part except in major cities where we can just buy capacity.
Outgoing calls basically work the same way. We send calls to carrier partners who have physical connections into the phone network and pay them for every minute. Calls to major cities usually cost less than 1 center, but rural areas or areas with little competition can cost as much as 30 cents in extreme cases.
With residential services that are unlimited, they are all sold on the assumption that users will have average usage and it'll average out. Yes, some users will have high usage, but then some have almost no usage. Our average minute usage is in the 400s per month. We have some users that use a few thousand minutes per month and we obviously lose money on them, but we have 100x as many that use less than 100 minutes so they cost almost nothing. So we take the average and price our unlimited plan knowing that the numbers will average out.
This is also why we don't allow business customers on our main plans (resellers can sell to businesses if they want since they pay per minute). If we let a business use our unlimited plan, they would most of the time have higher usage than a normal residential user and throw our averages off causing us to lose money.
We have things in our Terms of Service to protect us. The TOS prohbits business use and says that we have the right to cancel service if usage is not average residential usage. It also says that we define average residential usage as less than 3000 minutes since the average is about 400. Vonage and all the other providers have similar things in theirs.
With resellers, this would get very murky. While we can deal with our customers, we don't ever want to be in the middle between a reseller and his/her customer. Let's say you have a customer that has high usage and we don't feel it's residential usage, but you do. It would be hard to draw the line and wouldn't really be appropriate to just cancel the resold customer's account if their usage was too high. We also may have some resellers that have certain customers they want to work with and don't mind their "occasional business calls" or something and then if we go in trying to enforce our no business usage on residential policy very strictly (which we have to or we'd be losing massive amounts of money overnight), the reseller could get upset. Overall, we can't enforce our policies on your customers since they are not our customers and we don't want to get between a reseller and his/her customers.
If we ever did unlimited, we'd not be able to go lower than $8 per month under any circumstances for the math to work out. We wouldn't be able to offer a per minute option since resellers would be smart enough to put their low usage customers on a per minute plan with us and the high usage ones on an unlimited one and we'd not get the benefit of the averages, so we'd always be losing money. This would limit resellers alot since you wouldn't be able to do low use plans if you wanted and you'd be paying a minimum of $8 for every single account even if they had no usage. So you wouldn't get the averages to work for you either.
This is just a quick overview of the biggest things that come to mind with this. Hope that helps you see why we don't do it.
Ok i understand :) Just thought id ask since its a question im sure we all have thought about
Conversely, I'd be happy pursuing a Residential only market where I pay a $10 flat monthly fee, and charge $15 to my customers. VOIPo is then taking the greater risk, but then VOIPo has the wider law of averages to make such a thing possible. Your auditing process could pass alerts to Resellers, and Resellers could do the footwork. The Reseller website could even push $20/month, and have special sales to get in at $15.
The only way I see Business accounts working is to charge by the minute. With a mark-up, I'm not sure how much of a market would exist. The Residential market is still a huge area that should keep on growing. Residential looks like the way to begin unless the Reseller is well connected with industry, and already has a physical presence in their factories and offices.
Just my 2 cents.
I used to be an authorized dealer for majors wireless carriers in NY, so i used to deal with customers complaining about their bill. when they used to offer 600min and unlimited N+W. so i know how ppl usage can be. I sold wireless service for about 7 years.
Now here is my home usage and i don't used my home phone because i have unlimited in my wireless phone plus i own a Magic jack too.
I have a teenager daughter that only used the phone when she's not in school or texting with her cellphone.
From 11/01/2009 to 11/30/2009
Total Number of Minutes: 3605:20
Total Number of Calls: 430
From 12/01/2009 to 12/30/2009
Total Number of Minutes: 3884:00
Total Number of Calls: 640
From 01/01/2010 to 01/30/2010
Total Number of Minutes: 8088:26
Total Number of Calls: 627
This month so far
From 02/01/2010 to 02/05/2010
Total Number of Minutes: 1069:55
Total Number of Calls: 75
This is what they offer:
Unlimited calling to the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico
Thirteen calling features for no extra charge including caller ID, call waiting, 3-way calling & voicemail
Now with Optimum Voice you can add a phone line to your existing service for just $14.95 more per month.
looking at the high usage:
135 hours a month X 60 Min = 8,100 minutes a month
135 hours a month is about 5 Hours a day for 3 kids + wife.
I been waiting for the reseller program for more than a year but I would like to see an unlimited plan for resellers to be safe.
I'm sure a lot of ppl used that much minutes.
Just my 2 Minutes :p
Trying to scare away the competition I see :)Quote:
Originally Posted by livepublicity
I would like to see something like this, where we get $10 per every acct high usage or not, that way voipo don't take all the loses.Quote:
Originally Posted by usa2k
I've reconsidered my strategy, and think I have a good case for pushing a limited minute plan. Something that can contrast with the Vonage 500 minute plan.
I just wish there was forthcoming an API that could be used to get my key data from VOIPo, and even better, would let me place orders through web automation too. Baby steps ...
Too many people offering Unlimited, and By-the-minute. I want to be different. :)
Currently I am researching small business advice in MI,
and have begun a website design using Drupal.
Look like it will use Drupal/Ubercart/Secure Pages, and Authorize.net
optonline .net / cablevision .com offers small business and homes unlimited, since they offer internet service the phone is cheaper and the extra line too.
I need to offer something equal or competitive in NY/NJ/PA/MA/CT/ Long Island market.
I understand that i can target the low uses customers but i don't want to deal with overcharges.
Does the VOIPO reseller panel can be configure to stop at let say 500 min, to avoid problems?
thanks
Try setting it a couple minutes over what is used and see what it does.Quote:
Originally Posted by livepublicity
I am betting it will not stop service.
SUGGESTION:
- The Minutes limit be a Hard limit. Call it Hard Limit.
- Add a Soft Limit that will trigger an email advisory
The those that want a hard 500 minute limit can set the Hard limit to 500 and perhaps get warned when 470 is reached.
The other key pieces of data would be
- XX days of XX total.
- If it is 05 days of 31 total be afraid!
- If it is 30 days of 31 total not so bad
All such data should appear in the alert email.
That sound good once i get a beta account, lol.
Let see if i can test one out.
thanks for the info.
I set an account to one minute over its current usage.
I made a call, and waited a minute for the call to show up.The current minutes setting do not take any kind of action that I know about.
Now the account is decremented to 0 remaining.
Another test call took it to -1.
A third call took it to -2.
uhmm, idk yet i never test on the reseller panel.
Yes, there is automatic limiting available in vPanel. Once hit, all calls go to busy signal. It will not cut someone off while in a call, but would prevent calls once it's hit.Quote:
Originally Posted by livepublicity
All major players in the residential VoIP market have softcaps on their unlimited plans (generally 3K or 5K minutes and if you hit those, they will terminate service". With VOIPo, our softcap is 3K. Our average residential user uses around 400 minutes per month and the published national average for landlines was 472 the last I checked.
No they don't cut it, in my business i used to have it and i was running an international and local calling center (phone booth) and my usage was high.Quote:
Originally Posted by VOIPoTim
My family has a business using them too, I'm going to get the web access to see how many minutes they used.
If you read my previous posts this is what i have in my home any doubt i can proof it and i don't get cut off all my service works fine all the time.
From 11/01/2009 to 11/30/2009
Total Number of Minutes: 3605:20
Total Number of Calls: 430
From 12/01/2009 to 12/30/2009
Total Number of Minutes: 3884:00
Total Number of Calls: 640
From 01/01/2010 to 01/30/2010
Total Number of Minutes: 8088:26
Total Number of Calls: 627
This month so far
From 02/01/2010 to 02/05/2010
Total Number of Minutes: 1069:55
Total Number of Calls: 75
Quote:
Originally Posted by livepublicity
Are you talking about a discount residential VoIP service or a service provided by a cable company? Big difference.
Quote:
Originally Posted by livepublicity
http://www.optimum.net / cablevision almost every one has it here.Quote:
Originally Posted by VOIPoTim
they need there internet service to be able to use VOIPO!
Yeah big big difference with that kind of service and a traditional VoIP service. With the cable services, they will actually likely make more money the more you use it. Since they have their own physical networks they get paid for every minute of every received call by other phone networks. So the more calls you get, the more $ they make and this typically heavily offsets the cost of outgoing calls, so they are less aggressive with usage limits.Quote:
Originally Posted by livepublicity
VoIP providers such as Vonage, ViaTalk, VOIPo, PhonePower, etc are all more aggressive because we don't get paid for incoming call usage...we actually pay for it.
None of these providers would allow 8K minutes in a month, but with a cable service it's not as much of an issue.
You should try to study a unlimited plan to protect reseller where we pay a bit more for all plan even if they don't have a heavy usage but to be able to offer such of deal.
Remember ppl are always looking for better deal and we can't offer VOIPO services as a second line when theses companies offer 14.99 2nd line unlimited too.
Out of curiosity, if we could do an "unlimited" (with softcap) price on the DIDs of something around $5, but still stay usage-based/measured on the outgoing, is that something that would ease some fears?
In Tier 0 and Tier 1 areas, we could probably work that in.
If I rephrase/paraphrase what your said ... do you mean:
Purchase DIDs for $5/month with 'unlimited'/soft cap incoming, and metered outgoing.
Was that the proposal?
$5.00 DID
$1.00 E911
$5.50 If 500 minutes get used
============================
$11.00 typical monthly
Likely less because incoming would account for part of the typical 500 minute usage.
PLEASE CORRECT MISUNDERSTANDINGS.
Would this mean you could start the customer on $5 DID, then switch to $1 DID pricing if you see the usage is acceptable? That may not be in VOIPo's best interest.
Well the idea is that some people seem to be concerned about the metered usage. This is just an alternative that we're looking at to help with that. Def not able to do this kind of thing with outgoing, but incoming there is a little room.
It would be structured where you have to choose one or the other $1 + $0.01/min or $5 unlimited with softcap and that number couldn't be changed from one to the other.
Somehow I missed this answer. Sounds like a great option!Quote:
Originally Posted by VOIPoTim
Not likely appropriate for a Business Plan.
With such an Unlimited Inbound Plan,
the inbound and outbound will need separate minute totals.
I imagine this is a rethink of your billing system.
(Remember Tim, you suggested it, so now we want the option :))
It would be pretty easy to do. The unlimited minutes just wouldn't count in the totals at all.Quote:
Originally Posted by usa2k
Would we be able to know if inbound minutes were being abused?
That would be something likely for the reseller reporting...not so much for billing. Easier to keep separated.Quote:
Originally Posted by usa2k
Recap my thoughts
200 In/300 Out
$1.00 DID
$1.00 E911
$5.50 Inbound/Outbound
============================
$7.50
200 In/300 Out
$5.00 DID
$1.00 E911
$3.30 Outbound
============================
$8.30
To avoid abuse:
- You could offer Resellers two options:
- $5 = DID Inbound Unlimited
- $1 = DID Metered In/Out:
- Make it all or nothing
- You could switch from one billing mode to the other
- On Reseller monthly billing date.
- Or perhaps a 30 day minimum period once selected.
- You can only use one billing mode for ALL clients.
- No mix and match tricks.
Thinking more ...Quote:
Originally Posted by VOIPoTim
Also thinking separate Inbound/Outbound totals would make it easier for Resellers to promote Unlimited Incoming without using $5 DIDs. Vonage does not limit inbound, and that is the competition.
Maybe Tabs like you have on Call History: All, Incoming, Outgoing.
Any chance this may yet be considered?Quote:
Originally Posted by VOIPoTim
We may consider it for the future, but it would require pretty drastic coding changes if we did it so it would have to be in the next release if we did it (likely end of year).Quote:
Originally Posted by usa2k
AH NO!
Look You guys if you want a reseller plan as such as that then maybe their can be two types of plan like resellers lite and the regular reseller plan.
I dont know what you guys issues are as, What tim said as to the average usage and some that talk alot. I had no problems whatsoever taking his structure and implementing it into my own cost breakdown plan and I have no issues.
As to business plans I charge per minute and I also bundle them up for businesses i.e. I will give them a free quote as all businesses are different.
Look I dont mind if you guys want to go this route and Have VOIPO take control of your business because for whatever reason you cant figure out the margins but
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! Tim dont do this on the basis of a few people,
Tim as our private chats you know what i have invested and what i am currently doing with my reseller plan so please if you do decide to do this can you keep the reseller plan and make a reseller lite version. Or you can do what you said you might do and make an affiliate version where VOIPO handles everything for the customer.
Just my thoughts!
You guys are trying to throw in a Monkey Wrench for the ones that already figured it out!