- Today’s Landscape: The Growth and Challenges of International VoIP Termination

The growing adoption of VoIP has introduced many technical and business challenges as well as growth opportunities for telecommunications providers. VoIP makes it very easy and inexpensive to interconnect between carriers, compared to the assignment of fixed TDM ports and circuits. As a result, the industry has evolved from an environment where there was one or two wholesale carriers involved in the termination of a call, to today’s environment where there may be four or five players. This adds complexity and cost to call routing and can expose companies to potential fraud through relatively easy manipulation of signaling of a VoIP call. Yet, with all its challenges, this new VoIP landscape can also provide opportunities for telecommunications companies to reach new markets, expand their service offerings and increase their margins.

- The Advent & Growth of Cell Phone Operators

Since the early days of international calling, the receiving carrier would specify a rate to terminate calls to its country. As new mobile operators entered the marketplace, the country, or market, was split between the fixed line numbers and the mobile numbers. These markets were defined by international calling codes, and the terminating carrier would define UK Mobile, for example, as a series of codes that together constitute all the code ranges assigned to the mobile operators in the country. In most countries, fixed lines (or Proper lines) were defined by the difference between the country code (i.e. 44) and the Mobile codes.

There was little attempt to define all the various codes that fully define the fixed line destinations in that country. Over time, the mobile markets were split into the specific mobile operators (because of price differences between them), but, apart from sometimes splitting out a major city in the country, the Proper markets have not evolved. The growth of mobile operators with higher priced termination and higher portability levels is an issue that wholesale VoIP-based carriers need to tackle.

In the mobile space, where call termination costs are high and maintained through regulatory ruling, another change has occurred. Many of the original mobile networks have grown significantly; as a result, the Regulator has reduced the cost of termination to reflect the economies of scale. However, the newer 3G networks require a massive investment to provide country-wide coverage, and so the Regulator has allowed a much higher termination rate to those operators. The independent operators are competing for business in an environment where most consumers already subscribe to mobile phone service. Most of Europe has legislated and encouraged number portability to enable competitive carriers to compete with PTT’s on equal footing, so the majority of subscribers on the new 3G networks, with their expensive termination rates, actually have individual telephone numbers that originally were assigned to the lower cost incumbent operators.

- And Then There Were VoIP Players

Competition for fixed lines, most recently in the form of VoIP-based service providers, has added another significant complication. In many countries, the Regulator has supported the rise of competitive carriers by allowing a higher termination rate to their customers compared to the norm for the original PTT. In Belgium, Germany, France, Poland and others, a call to a competitive service provider costs the carriers more than a call to a customer of the PTT. Overlaying portability on this more complex structure adds yet another problem and/or opportunity that fast-moving VoIP players are able to address. This area also lends itself to peering opportunities – again, to be covered in a future article.

- Termination: Challenges and Opportunities

International carriers have long bought and sold with one another based on simplicity and blends rather than complexity. For example, if there is only a small percentage of calls to the expensive mobile numbers, or a small number of calls ported to the expensive destination, then a blend slightly higher than the PTT rate is an easy answer. As competition evolves towards higher percentages of portability and competitive carrier customers, the risk associated with blending increases substantially.

This is just a taste of the topics to be covered in coming articles. Each one will tackle a particular issue and identify solutions and opportunities for fast moving players in this competitive industry.

Source: http://www.ipbusinessmag.com/departments/article/id/464/the-411-on-international-voip

As far as I’ve seen on the web, there are a lot of people complaining about having bought a calling card, only using it once, and then when they wanted to use it again (after a year or so), they noticed that it had expired. Yeah, I’d get pretty mad too, if that happened to me!

But luckly, some companies have noticed this, and they solved the problem, offering phone cards that never expire. You can check out the offer of www.nobelcom.com, or find one of your own. You’ll save money on international calls without having to worry about your credit (for which you have already paid) expiring.

Now, making long distance and international calls is no more a costlier affair. In this fast paced world of high-end communication, internet and mobile phone has become an important part of daily life. With that, while moving towards latest and advanced technological innovation, VoIP services are in great demand. In Voice over IP services, both voice and video communications are combined in a single network. Well, in this technology of transforming communication; voice, video and images are compressed and then transmitted over IP network i.e. broadband connection. Today, this innovation in communication has made calling an easier task for anyone.

In addition to VoIP calling, user can also have an access to internet. Voice over IP is considered as the best alternative over conventional PSTN services. The calls over the Internet allows user to make long distance and international call at substantial rates. These services have gained its popularity in varied spheres of industry. For instance, VoIP phone services are well used in corporate and business houses for lowering down their heavy monthly expenditure of telephone. Moreover, with passage of time, services are gradually acquiring a position of prominence in the lives of most of residential users. Well, internet telephony is much cheaper than any other telephone services because it don’t require capital equipment.

While looking for the best services, user must check features like caller ID, voicemail, call conferencing, call transfer, faxes to email, outgoing call block and additional phone lines from his provider. Moreover, user must look for VoIP service that facilitate PC to PC calls, PC to IP calls, as well as VoIP to ordinary phone calls. Lastly, user feels satisfied with the IP services as it offer benefits like reliability, scalability, functionality, security and network efficiency when compared to PSTN services. The easiest way to find cheapest Voice over IP services is through online searching.

Free International Calls with Vonage

The popular VoIP provider Vonage has recently included free unlimited international calling to Europe within it’s Premium Unlimited Plan. This is the most popular calling plan that Vonage offers, which includes unlimited local and long distance service within the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico for a price of $24.99 per month.

Although Vonage advertises this plan to include free Europe calling, the free international calls are only for calls to France, Italy, Spain, the UK, and Ireland. If you call friends or relatives in these countries though, this is a super deal and simply cannot be beat! Calls to other countries can be made, but you’ll have to pay Vonage’s per-minute rates (which are very low, by the way).

As with most VoIP internet phone service, the Vonage unlimited plan comes with a ton of free features like voicemail, call waiting, caller ID, call forwarding, and many others. Vonage is one of the largest internet phone service providers within the U.S., and is definitely the most well-known, due to it’s advertising efforts.

Free International Calls with Sunrocket

Sunrocket internet phone service is best known for it’s ultra-cheap “flat fee” annual pricing plans. Sunrocket’s most popular “Annual Unlimited” plan is $199 per year (paid up front), and includes unlimited local and long distance calling within the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. All annual subscribers get a free $3 per month credit towards international calls. Although this might not sound like much in the way of free international calling, with many international rates as low as .03 per minute, this plan could provide you with up to 100 free minutes of international calls per month, depending on where you are calling.

For those who make a lot of international calls, Sunrocket offers an international calling plan called “Sunspots Edition”, which provides subscribers with unlimited free “anytime” international calling to 41 different countries/destinations. This plan costs a flat fee of $299 per year, and includes free calling to places like Mexico City, Australia, China, Japan, Germany, France, and many, many more destinations.

Sunrocket internet phone service also comes with a host of free features, but not quite as many as Vonage. You still get all the basics like voicemail, caller ID, call waiting, etc….

Whatever your calling needs are, there is a VoIP provider out there with a plan that is just right for everyone. The key to finding the best VoIP provider for your needs is to know what you want in the way of calling options, and then shopping around for the provider that offers the type of VoIP internet phone service plan you need. The quality of internet phone service has come a long way in the past couple of years, and the price cannot be beat. A broadband internet connection is required in order to use internet phone service, and for the best quality and most cost savings it’s best to choose cable internet or some form of T-1.

The callback services are value added services provided through IP telephony. This value added service delivers international calling solutions to clients to almost any part of the world at the lowest international rates. With the ‘cost efficiency’ in place, these services have gained quite a momentum across the world. More and more end users are turning to callback services for connecting with others at incredibly low costs.

The cheap callback allows users to access important calls from various fixed lines or mobile phones, even on the move. This feature enables users to avail cheaper calling rates any where across the globe. Moreover, venturing into the hosted callback platform does not require much infrastructural set-up and hardware requirements.

The callback web service comes into action when the originator of a call is immediately called back in a second call as a response. While using the call back, users can transmit the data, voice and video over the Internet. More often than not, users of international callback are allocated a unique and exclusive phone number. This number is also referred to as access number. For the international calls, customers first dial the access number and enter an authorisation code; and within fraction of seconds the switching center calls back. With a high-tech switching system in place, users are able to call back at the phone number from where they have registered.

The advantages associated with the callback services include saving up on frequently dialed numbers, hassle free calling and the ‘callback trigger’ feature. With the help of the callback trigger feature, users get reminded of their calls from time to time. The VoIP call service allows the users to connect within fractions of seconds anywhere around the world.