How to start the next Vonage

This is a page for anyone that is interested in starting a full-blown residential and/or small business VOIP provider business.

(original editor)
“What I wanted to do with this website is combine all the great minds of this website to get closer… faster to getting together all the information I would need if I wanted to create the next Vonage.
Please feel free to change, add or correct what I or anyone else that was posted here.” – Damian

To start the next Vonage you will need essentially 6 things (other than 500,000 clients). Each of these things need to be qualified so that you know that your providers will still be there after you go live, and that they will honour your contract with them.

• Website to allow the customer to sign up, and see their options & minutes used. (optional, but probably needed)
• Provider of minutes – So your customers can call regular PSTN phone numbers – buy low, sell high
• DID provider – So your customers have regular PSTN phone numbers for incoming calls
• VOIP Server – to route the traffic from the DIDs to your customers & allow them to call out – Vonage Uses SER, Broadvoice use Broadsoft, RNKTEL uses asterisk.
• Hardware provider for the ATAs needed to have your customers connect to the VOIP server
• A billing engine. You do want to get paid, hm?

Number 1 rule: Test the entire solution. Run a pilot project with some volunteers for at least a couple of months before going live. Leave the pilot running so you can test changes before putting them into production. Reliability is your friend.

Provider of Minutes

You’re going to be looking around for companies that provide you with Minutes for your customers to be able to pick up their phones and dial a phone number (local or long distance)

Most of these can be found in this page: ((VOIP+Service+Providers+B2B))

Here are a couple of good minutes providers I’ve found so far:
StanaPhone Wholesale US =0.75-1.1 /min – Accepts Wire transfer, Check, and Credit Card – $100 Minimum commitment – Email them and Sign up within weeks

Gyrocom has rates from 0.44 /min, but varies a LOT – Up and running after you call them. ($250 Minimum per week use it or lose it)

CommPartners – Large carrier class network, DIDs in most major cities, Sponser of www.voip-info.org!
http://www.mutualphone.com SERVICE IS NOT GOOD AND DON’T HAVE SUPPORT TO THE CLIENTS – USA 0.012 USD /min Full A-Z routing, AMAZING call quality and rates. Accounts work with any DID provider, such as free DID from www.ipkall.com. NOTE: www.mutualphone.com is a really bad services, they never give support to they clients, every day have problems and never answer your email support. Mutualphone is a really fake enterprises.

DID Providers

You’re going to be looking around for companies that provide you 1-800 numbers, or Local DIDs in all the states, and/or countries where you’d like your customers (and maybe you too) to have phone numbers where people can call using any PSTN phone line. The best source for this is on www.voxbone.com – It is a exchange patform for differnt voip providers to sell there did’s to you without a high per month cost to you of inventory. You show all there did numbers on your web site and route it to your network when customer orders it.

Most of these can be found in the same page as above: ((VOIP+Service+Providers+B2B))

DID World Wide – Largest worldwide coverage, multi protocol and multi channel supported online DID provider.

DIDForSale We offer largest coverage all over US with more the 11000 Rate Centers. Multiple products for all size companies. Highly rated for price, quality and customer satisfaction.

• Works with any SIP based PBX like Asterisk, Freeswitch, Free PBX, Cisco, Opensips, Kamailio, VoIP Switch
• No Commitment, Many products to fit your budget.
• Unlimited calling on SIP Trunks
• Largest Single Tier SIP Trunking with unlimited minutes anywhere.
• DIDforSale now also provides US, UK and Canada DID’s.
• You can get Local Phone number for your business.
• Low per minute Toll Free numbers
• DIDforSale now also offers unlimited inbound/outbound SIP Trunks for businesses.
• Check the sip trunk pricing
• Works with any SIP based Phone system, Asterisk, Freeswitch, Voip switch and lot more.
• DIDForSale is the service provider for lot of Business who provider Vonage type service to businesses. These businesses can get telephone numbers from anywhere in North America.

www.didx.net – A wholesale marketplace and exchange patform for voip providers to buy to resell and/or sell DIDs to you with great features reporting, billing, point of sale, free APIs; ringto SIP IAX2 or Skype; ticket system, advanced manual search even for vanity numbers. You how all DID numbers available on DIDX on your web site and route to your network when customer orders. Routing is instant to your network. Get 2 FREE DID for testing as part of interop and terms and agreement. DIDX does not provide any DI on its own but all are provided by CLECs, incumbents, voip companies, cable companies, and other IP communications companies with a vendor rating system of 0-8 with 5 and above as good and better. It has millions of DID from 68 + countries. Since it’s wholesale only, minimum monthly quantity of DID in each account is 20 through May 30, 2007 and then 50 purchased DID or 100 available for sale international DID (1000 available for sale USA DID) from June 1, 2007 until further notice. DIDX also offers complimentary publicity to active DIDX members on Super Technologies’
magazine Techistan and its iTunes and DIDX audio podcast channels.

Call us at 760-517-6724.
Email us: [email protected].
Skype: william.shihata1

• Hosted Voip
• Calling Cards
• SMS Voip
• Internet Fax
• Mobile Dialer
• Cloud Web Conference

Phone 2 Net offers SIP , IAX2, and h323 trunking services. You can get unlimited incoming calls over IP to any of the protocols or Google, MSN, or Yahoo messengers. Guranteed tier1 quality numbers only. Best price in the market. visit www.phone2net.com. Great for calling card voip operators.

Stanaphone Retail They will give you a FREE DID in NEW York State (although it wouldn’t be fair to use them unless you load some money onto your account) – You’re up and running withing minutes – Takes Paypal

SipGate Free DID in UK & Germany – Same as Stana

Link2voip asterisk settings – 1-800 DIDs for $1.49/month & 4.5c/min – DIDs for $4.50/mo plus 1.37c/min only in a few Canadian area codes – Takes Paypal, but it takes about 1-2 days to get your DIDs – $20 Minimum Commitment

CommPartners – Large carrier class network, DIDs in most major cities, Sponser of www.voip-info.org!

VOIP Server

You can use SER or Asterisk for this purpose, but the biggest problem is the billing. Many recommend to write your own, or you can buy a ready made software which supports asterisk or ser. Vonage uses SER and many like broadvoice, phoneopia use asterisk. You can use an asterisk cluster to bring high redundency.

Asterisk The most talked about VoIP server here and with all the information here I was able to setup a server with phones within my office, and outside (for family members) also I am getting DIDs from the links above, and using minutes from the minutes providers above. Asterisk (or just *) is the most feature filled VoIP server at the expense of scalability. Asterisk can interface with a wider range of user CPE (Customer Premises Equipment) and trunk connections (referred to simply as “minutes” here) opening up more possibilities for you.

• Vidanetwork Technologies. Asterisk based Scalable network managment and billing system could be useed to provide services to not only residential users. but also small and medium businesses. It has User provisioning, Pre-pay, Post-pay, Flat Rate with free minutes billing plans, Hosted Virtual PBXes, Calling cards, and Conference room management. The End user web portal allows user to setup account, change call features, review call logs and even make payment online.

• SuperTec’s Vonage Replacement Solution Super Technologies was one of the first Vonage wholesalers, and then later developed the a new solution based on Asterisk. Now offer the entire Vonage-type in a box solution starting 20,000$us. Includes provisioning, billing, CRM, Accounting, Auditing, Web Site, Credit Card charging, Paypal Charging, every thing and everything you need for becoming a Vonage-type or better. Includes integration with DIDX for DID numbers, and phoneopia for outgoing services.

SIP Express Router I’ve been told that if you have REAL traffic (if you move BEYOND selling to your friends, and 100 other customers) you should be using SER (as it’s called). FWD, uses them and so do a lot of other providers including Vonage. It is touted that a powerful dual processor server can handle the call volume of a half of a million users. SER really only handles the setup of each call per the SIP specification. The actual voice stream travels directly between the calling party and your contracted PSTN gateway (provider of “minutes”).

You can look through this list of VOIP PBX and Servers where you can find the correct option (then come back to this page, and correct what I’ve written here)

Website for customers.

Here you’re going to either have to build a custom made solution connecting to the VOIP Server above, or look for a product that includes some kind of website for you and your customer to be able to add remote, change services through a graphical or web interface.

Get someone else to do it.

RNK – Asterisk based. They offer did and termination. They have a starting price of around $7000 and they’re growing very fast. They’ll get you up on your feet within weeks.

Voip INC – Alse HUGE, their intial cost is about $8000 which includes $5000 of minutes purchased through them. they’re fairly flexable, and will accept DIDs from other providers of yours & minutes from other providers (after you used up the mandetory ones you’ve purchased from them)

They also offer a HOSTED voip solution for you to become a VOIP service provider.