Hello i have a few questions related to freepbx i’m looking at starting a company that offers phone services to company’s and small business for around 20 to 29 us dollars its my hope that i can use freepbx to accomplish this my question is i need some advice on trunk providers that i can get bulk numbers from for freepbx to use in that use case and also just if i’m going in the right direction. if someone could jump on the bandwagon and help me with these questions that would be willing to hold my hand and explain it to me that would be grate thanks
sorry in advance
Do you have any idea all of the legal issues with selling phone service?
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Do you care to elaborate for me please thanks
If you are thinking about selling ‘vanilla’ cloud phone service online, you gotta be kidding.
- Competition is cutthroat – there are hundreds of well established companies in the business.
- Fraud is rampant. The CTO of a major ITSP once posted that more than 90% of new applications were fraudulent. While automated tools can filter most of these, a huge human effort will still be needed.
- Regulatory issues are a nightmare – not just the FCC filing requirements, but taxes and fees assessed by thousands of states, counties and cities.
That said, there might be an opportunity for you in a niche area.
Providing hands on service for local businesses. Meeting with them to discuss requirements and budgets, installing phones and wiring, training users, providing on-site maintenance, etc. This would work best if you also have the skills to provide related IT and security services.
Servicing a small ethnic group that may not have access to mainstream services because of language and cultural barriers. You would provide good rates back to their home country, numbers in their home country, support in their language, etc. If you are skilled in other than English, Spanish or Chinese, this is IMO a possibility.
Servicing an industry where you have expertise, especially an older one which does not yet deal well with social media, texting and other ‘modern’ means of communication.
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I usually recommend that if you want to go this direction to take a look at Sangoma’s Cloud PBXact Agent Program, your customers will purchase from a co-branded website, we handle the billing, including filing and paying appropriate taxes and fees, and pay you a very generous evergreen commission and we usually have pretty substantial upfront Spiffs for contracts. We also offer great deals on rental phones, which means your customers don’t have to outlay a huge capital investment to get going with the service. Because of the flexibility provided by “Full & Lite Extensions” pricing is very competitive with all major Hosted PBX / UCaaS providers.
If you reach out to a sangoma channel manager (920) 886-8130 they can review the commission structure with you.
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A reseller partner is a solid choice for something like this.
Wait, wait, wait. While all the points that have been raised are valid and good points there are some basics here that are missing.
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How much actual Telephony experience is there with this project? Someone understand how this industry operates and functions? They understand how LNP works? Interconnects/interactions between PSTN/backbone carriers, etc, etc, etc.
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How much actual SIP experience and knowledge is involved in this project? Can people there troubleshoot, understand and work with SIP and can deal with things?
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How much experience does someone have with 9-1-1 and dealing with that? You understand how having improperly routed numbers or non-filed numbers can end up in the wrong PSAP which could delay the emergency response (or not get through at all) and then if those delays or mis-routing or any mishandling of those calls could land you in hot water and trouble.
Again, Telephony is consider a public utility there are certain expectations that users will have with this service because of that. Every little feature standard telephone service provides is expected to be a part of your service. Not understanding the basics of Telephony followed by SIP will make this a very stressful and costly endeavor.
You need to make sure you do this right because eventually if you don’t you’ll ended up hiring a provider consultant (like me) who will come in and tell you everything is wrong and needs to be overhauled. That generally results in either the provider doing it or balking and not doing it only to end up closing their doors because they spent too much money on tech support and chasing down problems and issues end users are having because they just don’t understand the industry or business.
Brand new ITSPs/voice providers in a setup like this waste more money than they realize running around chasing problems that shouldn’t exist due to lack of experience. It’s not really revenue generating services when you’re spending days on end trying to keep things together with bubble gum and duct tape.
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