Hi,

Plenty to talk about today. Dave Nelsen, a founder of Talkshoe, has a
lot of experience in the telecommunications space and he joins us
today to chat about its current state, conferencing and whatever else
comes to mind. So we have a meta conference aout conferencing, it
won't be the first time :)

You probably saw John Todd's message on one of the lists: Skype for
Asterisk is in open beta: go for it. Pricing isn't yet established,
but other questions may be answered today.

One of our regulars, Maxim, mentioned GizmoVoice.com which explains
everything you wanted to know about getting a free Google Voice number
and being able to use it with SIP, thanks to Gizmo & co. I've done
this with OpenSky and it has worked well so far.

Join us at 12 Noon EDT, 9AM PDT, 5PM UK or: http://tr.im/vuctime for
your time zone.

Info at http://VUC.me

Backchannel text chat IRC #voip-users-conference (irc.freenode.net)

See you there

/r

Last week's post-call, there was a question about VoicePulse termination
rates.

I am a long-time VP customer (4 years), and the new rate is 1.9¢ per minute.
Voicepulse was formerly a 'variable rate' service for termination--often
only .5¢ /min billed 6 seconds at a time.  Recently they changed their
termination rates to 1.9¢ flat rate in the US.  Now they're more expensive
than almost everyone else.

In the OLD days of the OLD plan I thought VoicePulse was the right ITSP
choice for ANYBODY as a FIRST account.   Figuring:

-Yes, you may be  paying too much for the first DID ($11), but you're
getting 4 (count 'em) concurrent channels.
-You can send ALL of your outbound calls through VP, but naturally you can
get subsequent DID's from any number of other providers.
-The expensive first DID is offset by the good termination value, and with 4
unlimited inbound channels, it's NOT an unreasonable price with any kind of
inbound call volume.
-If VP had an expensive route (say 1.9¢) you COULD simply pick another
termination provider with a 1.5 or 1.0 'blended rate' for JUST that route.

Now that VP is 'flat rate' 1.9, I'm a bit disappointed and I'm not sure why
I would recommend them to anyone over other offerings.

YES, they're good quality, and YES, support is good, but so far they don't
appear to be any better than other 'high end' VOIP providers out there like
Vitelity.  This VP change prompted me to sign up for a number of other
termination providers (no bottom-of-the-barrel stuff).  Post-change my VP
termination cost increased by about DOUBLE.   Switching providers away from
VP will still be more expensive than OLD VP, but significantly less than the
NEW VP.

Too bad.  I would have much preferred VP to increase their VARIABLE rates by
a flat percentage, in particular as a flat percentage of the gross margin on
each route.  That would have increased revenue while still maintaining a
unique and attractive product offering.

-Karl

On Aug 6, 2009, at 12:14 PM, Karl Fife wrote:

Karl,

I was with VoicePulse for a few years as well and the price increase  
tipped me over. I started using Flowroute for outbound on one of the  
times my VoicePulse died. They used to be variable, but are just under  
1 cent per minute for US/Canada (more to Alaska and Hawaii). The wife  
calls colombia often and the rates there were some of the lowest I've  
seen. The most recent time VoicePulse had an outage, it took my  
incoming down for hours. I ported my numbers to them and have been  
happy ever since. 2 channel per did is unlimited incoming @ 6.95/mo.  
You can also pay per minute and get unlimited channels.

The negative is that it's out west without an east coast presence.

That being said, I connect from Michigan and Florida with very quick  
ping times.

I loved voicepulse but experienced too many outages and billing errors  
to keep me. The rate increase was the final straw for me.

Fred Posner
f...@teamforrest.com
+1.503.914.0999 (direct)

On the web at http://www.teamforrest.com

I agree with you Karl. I haven't used VP much since the rate increase
(duh!) because it was very attractive when it was at 0.5c/min. I never
got  a DID with them as their setup costs were too expensive and when
I tried to port the Nufone one years ago there was a $25 charge!

I'm looking through all my various providers right now, free and paid.
Nufone has died, but I still use OnSIP/Jnctn, Sipgate, Gizmo, Skype
and our local France hosted pbx.

Tomorrow we'll be chatting with Ruben Olsen about mobile VoIP. I am
suddenly interested in the subject myself as I just bought an iPod
Touch, aka iPhone with no phone, GPS or camera. The device is very
useful and I will post something lter about my experience after about
48 hours with the device. I was about to hook up RF.COM with the
voicepulse connect service until I found out they insert ads somehow.
Since I don't have a real phone I never got rf.com to work anyway.

See you all tomorrow, I hope.

/r

Good stuff.
Should be a good call.
Last week I had a planning meeting smack-dab in the middle.
Had to be on the week we had such a fantastic guest.
Karl

Meaning no east-coast media gateways?

Just out of curiosity, what was VoicePulse screwing up on the billing front.

Do any of your flat-rate 2 channel unlimited providers allow you any leeway
in the channel limit?  2 channels is honestly enough for me, but for ten
minutes a month I'll be on two calls and I let the third one go to
voicemail.  A hard limit means caller #3 gets a busy signal.  Busy signals
are so 1990's ;-)

A 'softer' cap on 2 channels would be a great product differentiator,
allowing an occasional burst, only requiring you to buy more if you're using
more than 2 channels some percentage of the time.  I'd buy that product in a
minute.

-Karl