DEAL Lowest Cost SIP Terminations (US48 and Canada so far)

[atsak]

I will send a PM soon - I wanted to ask publicly because I think something REALLY critical that people miss in maintaining decent service is the quality of the internet connections you connect through. Twice now I've run into issues where everything *looked* fine, but wasn't, due to an intermediate point. I asked about Torix because it's so light, latency wise. My colo / ISP peers through there (amongst several others). I was hoping to turn attention onto the idea that cheap is key, but it still has to work, which means back haul that's decent

 

[Rrrr]

Phil
While your offering looks attractive and comes with SIP trunk registration, it it certainly new (for me) to start paying for incoming minutes.
But your FAQ adequately explains it.

However, the following statements are "nice", but not "precise":

The price you see is the price you pay
No restrictive minimums
No unfair averaging out

What would be helpful is to state how you are charging for each call:
- what is the minimum charge per call in seconds or in USD$?
- per second or per 6 seconds or otherwise?
Until you are answering these questions on your site, you have only shared with us some nicely written marketing material.

UPDATE:
DID logic has impressive infrastructure and offers many and clear instructions on their site, but it needs to be paid for too:
I made a 5 sec call using DID logic and was charged for a full minute.
I made a 75 sec call using DID logic and was charged for two full minutes.
To use their words:
THAT is a restrictive minimum charge of 60 sec and that is "unfair" averaging out, when you are rounding up to the nearest minute.
Even worse, when you are not mentioning it.
Without going into statistics, most calls are short and affected by this kind of pricing.
So no, they are by far not the cheapest on termination.

 

[w1ve]

Voxbeam is less mainstream, but they have great rates. We've used them as primary outbound trunks for two years now.

Outbound rates for on-net rate centers (lower 48):
$0.0049 Standard routing
$0.0081 Premium routing
6 sec incremental billing for both.

I just signed up for a Voxbeam account. The xls for Standard Routing shows $0.03 for off-net USA, which has a bunch of NPAs.
Where do I find the "On-net" pricing, and what NPAs on-net includes?

Plus, their documentation on Channels is very sparse. The rep they assigned me is very non-responsive to emails.
What is the MRC for a channel?

TIA Gerry

 

[w1ve]

Found The A-Z rates. Still confused on Channel pricing "DIDs with Capacity"

 

[wardmundy]

New VoIP.ms pricing effective Black Friday, 11/29/13:

We're pleased to announce a permanent gift that will take effect on Black Friday, November 29th 2013.

For calls to the United States: The USA Premium rate will go down from 1.25 cents ($0.0125) to 1 cent ($0.01). USA Value route is being discontinued in favor of offering solely a premium route at a rate of 1 cent per minute which is lower than the previous price of the value route ($0.0105).

For calls to Canada: Premium route will also be lowered from 1.25 cents ($0.0125) to 1 cent ($0.01). Canada value route (starting at $0.0052) will remain available.

The billing increment for your outgoing calls to USA and Canada remains at 6/6 (the calls get charged incrementally in segments of 6 seconds), that means you do not have to pay for 30 seconds or a whole minute for your calls of very short duration compared to using other providers.

We also now offer wholesale termination custom rates for clients with over 10,000 outgoing minutes per month. Contact us to have a representative assigned to you.

 

[jeff.h]

I've been using Flowroute for several years now, have been pretty happy with them and haven't really had any issues. Once in a while I hear a complaint from one of my users about call quality, but it's almost always with a mobile number. I have noticed that their LNPs have been taking longer to process in the last 6 months and I have had to email them on my last two requests to ask for status about a week or so after submitting the LOA and requested bill copies. They always tell me it's the losing carrier (SIP Station), but by some strange coincidence the status always changes the next day and I get ported about 10 days after that.

The call quality has been pretty good and I say that as someone who has been in the VoIP world working at the carrier connection level for years going back to when Cisco, VocalTec and Clarent equipment wouldn't even consider talking to each other. I know its wholesale and the US market is very cut throat, but I would almost call it toll quality.

I've only got about 5,000 minutes per month outbound and pretty much all of the carriers I used to deal with when I was doing the carrier to carrier stuff won't even talk to someone about US term unless you had some nice international traffic to mix in or had a route that they were looking for and took your US traffic to get a better rate on the route you were offering.

All of that being said, I've never used any of the other carriers mentioned here, but am considering adding one for redundancy and dropping SIP Station. Been keeping a trunk with them, but $25 a month for what they claim is unlimited and getting an email telling me that I have sent too many calls upset me a little bit.

Who do you all recommend as a viable quality secondary provider to compliment Flowroute?

Thanks,

Jeff

 

[Rrrr]

I assume you look for quality in calls and having proper support:
In combination with low cost I like Anveo. They are also good in porting in numbers.
However you need to register your outgoing callerids in your anveo account before using them, but they do not require these DIDs to be theirs.
You may also consider Callcentric. Excellent support but i have less experience with them on outgoing calls as they cost more.

 

[hillclimber]

As was mentioned earlier in the thread is the Betamax option which I have used for years with very good results. Since I must always pay something to terminate a mobile call in Europe, which I do often, I like to buy credit with Betamax companies using a 'Free-days' business model. Every time I buy phone credit, needed to terminate non-US mobile calls, I earn credits for free land-line calls to the Netherlands, but also countries like the US, UK, FR, JP, etc. Consult this chart to see which betamax company offers the best deal for you to use, (along with well-configured Dial-Plans on your server):

http://backsla.sh/betamax

So I am always calling the US for free, without using Google Voice, or even changing my configuration for years, aside from server upgrades.

FWIW, these are my trunk settings, (12voip.com is the betamax company in this example, swap it with any others, improvements welcome!):

PEER Details
username=YOURUSERNAMEHERE
type=peer
secret=PASSWORDGOESHERE
qualify=yes
nat=yes
insecure=very
host=sip.12voip.com
fromuser=00XXXXXXXXXXX (your did)
sendrpid=yes
fromdomain=12voip.com
disallow=all
authuser=YOURUSERNAMEHERE
allow=ulaw&alaw&g729

USER Details
blank

REGISTRATION details
YOURUSERNAMEHERE[email protected]/YOURUSERNAMEHERE

 

[Rrrr]

Bestvoipreselling is also part of betamax/dellmont. I find the rates are lowest in the world, see post #13

 

[wardmundy]

hillclimber and Rrrr: So, if I understand Betamax correctly, one can sign up with one of the Betamax providers (I chose 12VoIP), pay the minimum fee (10 euros in my example below), and get 90 days of free calling to all of the sites listed as 0 cost in the Betamax table for that provider for that day.

Again, using 12VoIP from the rate table above, that would mean calls today in any quantity and of any duration up to 300 minutes a week to landlines in Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada (incl mobile), China (incl mobile), Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Peru, Poland, Puerto Rico (incl mobile), Romania, Singapore (incl mobile), Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, U.K., U.S. (incl mobile), and Venezuela would all be free for 90 days. Works out to roughly $5 a month since you have to replenish your account every 90 days to keep getting the free calls. Otherwise, there's a no-longer-free rate which would start draining your balance.

If my math is correct and assuming you made 300 minutes of calls a week, it looks like you'd get 4,000+ U.S. minutes (or 4,600 minutes to U.S. cellphones) for your $15 investment. That's 300 freebies a week plus 500 landline minutes at 3 cents/min. or 1000 cell minutes and 1.5 cents/min. with full minute rounding in the case of 12VoIP. You also get 60 free minutes to try out the service.

Or, for other destinations, just find the Green (free) or Pink (cheapest) provider for the desired country and sign up. Rates, of course, can change daily.

Have I got it right??

 

[hillclimber]

Yes, you are correct, except the any quantity part. Read the terms and I think you'll see you are limited to something like 300 free minutes a week, as I recall, and I might be remembering wrong. But still. Also, there's no minimum cost. You don't have to pay anything if you don't make calls, so I don't understand how you figure a $5 monthly cost.

I can also confirm I did just that about 30 minutes ago. I signed up for a new account with FreeVoipDeal and paid 10 euros plus tax and handling (12.31 total) and received 120 Free days. I've been using 12voip for a long time, but now I'll try FreeVoipDeal after looking at the betamax rates this morning.

I have never been burned by a betamax company, except for DialNow. They advertised their termination to a Dutch mobile at something very low, while charging me 10 cents a minute. I contacted them, and they adjusted their website published price for (I suppose was only) a few days to refelct the 10 cent price. Their reply to me was I was actually charged the correct price. So sorry guys, but Nordstrom's law applies, and I told a few friends how unhappy I am with you.

I have been terminating in the US (and other places) for free using Betamax for years, and the quality is fine. Using PIAF. PIAF rocks!

If you really want to scrape prices, then I suggest skipping the backsla.sh/betamax page and scraping each company's published prices directly, yourself. I can help develop this, using jQuery to scrape and insert into a Drupal (mySQL) database.

 

[wardmundy]

Could you also explain the fromuser DID?? Is this a DID that you simply have registered in your account and verified? Or does it have to be a DID from the particular provider you are using?

Once we have all of the details nailed down, it shouldn't be too hard to scrape the Betamax rate table to automatically pick the proper outbound trunk based upon current rates.

 

[hillclimber]

The fromuser DID is my actual home DID that came with my internet subscription. In other words, that's the outgoing DID number that I want everyone to see. But note, this will not work until you have verified this number as your own with the betamax company, either by SMS or call-back + PIN.

What you see is the result of a *lot* of googling + trial and error + sheer will. I don't really know where I got everything from, but this recipe does work for me for a long time already, and I laugh at friends that pay for Skype to terminate, (or even Mickey Mouse a Skype-to-Skype most of the time to save money).

 

[Rrrr]

It is a bit tricky with 12voip. From a quick perusal of the site, it reminds me of justvoip (also from the same firm) which I used in the past, but here my quick opinion:

1) There are a few rules : max 300 minutes a week. http://www.12voip.com/instructions/ (note that call duration is limited to 60 min).
2) Once you have put in your 10 euro and made some free calls, then added another 10 euro and so on....at some time you will want to reduce your credit, right?
So that is when you start looking at the "normal" rates and find out that:

a) The rate per minute is much higher than other providers, AND
b) Rates are charged in Eurocents per minute and calls are rounded up to next minute. All rights reserved. Rates are subjected to change without notice.
So 300 minutes at 12voip is much less compared to a provider that charges per second without rounding (such as bestvoipreselling).

3) I used these schemes in the past but then I found out that Betamax is actually regularly launching a new site with an amazing offer, then gradually increasing minute rates, then launching another site, etc.
There is no free lunch (other than GV). I just got tired of having to study and analyse all these deals, there are always conditions where a rates scraper does not help.

One thing I have to give Betamax/Dellmont is that they are providing exact details on how they charge. Thanks for that. Now it is up to the customer to see what deal fits him best.

My trunk settings for bestvoipreselling:

username=XXX
type=peer
trustrpid=yes
sendrpid=yes
secret=XXXX
qualify=no
port=5060
nat=yes
insecure=port,invite
host=77.72.174.129
fromdomain=77.72.174.129
disallow=all
context=from-trunk
canreinvite=no
allow=ulaw

`

(no need to register an outbound callerid first, use anything you like)

 

[hillclimber]

In the past, I used to have my calls disconnected after 60 minutes, but it hasn't happened in a long time, like at least for a year if my memory is accurate. I know I have gone over the limit, and I really think this isn't applied any more, but your results may be different). Whenever a call goes wonky, it is usually because I run PIAF in a VM, and the whole system needs a reboot. So I reboot and call back and just explain I'm making a free call over the internet and we continue. This works. But I don't think I've been cut off for going over 60 minutes in a while. I've been cut off when my credit ran out, like immediately, so that's one way to do it.

 

[rastasean]

It should be noted that sip.us will discontinue their per-minute plan effective 1 january, 2014 and require around $100 monthly commitment. If you sign up before then and make a deposit, you can be grandfathered in.

If you do become a sip.us account holder, they have tons of rate centers available with cheap prices.

 

[hillclimber]

This page is a more complete list of all the betamax companies than is available on the chart at www.backsla.sh/betamax:

http://www.mobilevoip.com/en/supported_brands

It also has a universal mobile dialler for those companies, available on many common mobile platforms. Later versions of the software also has a call-back feature baked right into the client (so upon receiving a call-back dial-tone, the contact list becomes available again for outgoing calls).

 

[wardmundy]

FYI: Lists on page 1 have been updated.

 

[rastasean]

FYI: Lists on page 1 have been updated.

Probably also worth adding in non-recurring charges and recurring charges for buying DIDs.

**also, sip.us is now a solely trunk provider.

 

[Milton Alvis]

http://www.sip.us/ should be in the SIP Termination Providers list.
Michael Rand, CEO, and Marc Fribush, CFO, have both been quite helpful, responding to emails typically within 1-2 days and helping me transition from both more expensive VoIP & POTS providers.
Call quality has been good, even though still mostly using POTS PBX equipment.
Even Fax throughput, without T.38, via WinFax has worked surprisingly well.