Yea I told the ipifony guys that we cannot charge what their payback
model said to for business lines - something like $35 per handset. We
just couldn't pay back their system with the rates we have to charge.
We still charge per handset, but more around $18 each with all
features. We definitely think it's worth doing VoIP though. It makes
selling business Internet much easier for us to be able to offer a
package. Even as you say 10 extensions at $18 per, $180 plus the
Internet. Maybe it's more than Comcast when you add the Internet but
it's much more in the ballpark than if the handsets were double. We're
just starting to keep better track of stuff like this but we're at about
50% of business accounts wanting bundled voice and the competition's
quote has it so ours has to as well.
Joe Falaschi
e-vergent
On 4/6/15 10:31 PM, George Skorup (Cyber Broadcasting) wrote:
The per extension model doesn't work anymore, as far as business
customers. Say they have 10 phones/extensions at $35/mo each. Comcast
or AT&T can come in and blow that away with $200/mo business service.
Been there, done that, cannot do that anymore.
Don't think you can just jump into doing voice. IMO, it's not worth it
at all. Too many headaches. For your own business, sure, have at it.
On 4/6/2015 9:33 PM, Ken Hohhof wrote:
You’ve got to charge for something. It has become standard practice
not to charge for minutes, even though you get charged for minutes.
So some combination of $X per DID and $Y per extension. Especially
when you are talking to businesses, they are used to paying per
“line”, where if they want to be able to have Z simultaneous incoming
or outgoing calls, they need Z lines, usually each with its own DID
but configured as a rollover or hunt group to the main number. But
with VoIP you can have as many calls as you want with just one
“line”, so you need a different model. Also, features like voicemail
and call waiting and caller ID that used to bring in tons of money
for the phone companies are now expected free as part of standard
service. So you need to charge for something. Otherwise you end up
supporting 20 or 100 handsets with unlimited local and long distance
for a total of $20 per month and you go broke. I think the idea is
that an extension is a placeholder for a bucket of minutes, if a
business or MDU has 100 extensions, they will likely make 100 times
as many calls as someone with one extension. On the other hand, a
business with 1 DID and 100 extensions probably shouldn’t pay as much
as 100 individual customers each with an extensions and a DID,
especially since you will probably pay some small amount per month
per DID for origination.
