LNP, compliance, and configuration support to resellers

[fisamo]

While Voip resellers don't have to worry so much about technical issues like file permissions, etc., they do have a compliance burden. LNP, E911, USF, and local taxes do not apply to hosting accounts but can cause significant headaches for the small voip operator. I'm very interested in the details regarding compliance support offered by Voipo to resellers.

In particular:

• What kind of 'LNP status portal' will be available to resellers looking to monitor status of port-in requests?
• What E911 tools are available to the reseller? Do resellers automatically have access to Voipo's E911 vendor to verify addresses, etc?
• I understand that billing will ultimately be the responsbility of the reseller. Will there be any kind of 'local tax calculator' option or tool available to resellers? How about pass-thru of USF fees?
• Given the pricing model, it seems like it would be straightforward for a reseller to offer a 'business plan' even though Voipo does not offer one. Is there any reason Voipo would object to this?
• What control portal will the reseller have to supply to their customers? Is there a pre-packaged control panel, an API, or both?

I'm sure more questions will come to mind over time, especially as more details of the program are released...

[usa2k]

Great input. I expect answers will eventually come. As long as the questions come, they can work them into the dotting of the Is, and crossing all the Ts.

[fisamo]

So far, Tim's given a great preview of the reseller platform for those curious enough to look into it. I wanted to put in a plug for those questions, because (a) they've come to mind, (b) they haven't (yet) been answered, and (c) I suspect that not everyone's thought to ask them. I do believe these questions will be addressed before the full-public rollout (possibly with any limited release to 'beta' resellers), but I thought it reasonable to put them on the table now.

Reseller programs seem (to me) to be quite like the 'drop ship' shops one can open (e.g. via Doba - and others, I'm sure)... Limited support from the product supplier, 'small' monthly fee to reseller, each order gets charged to reseller at 'wholesale' price, while reseller can charge anywhere between wholesale and MSRP, depending on competitors' street price. Great opportunity to make money for the person who can bring people in the door. Not for the 'faint of heart' and not a 'turn key, pre-made, super-profitable-with-no-effort business opportunity. (Granted, those don't really exist, except in the minds of the suckers sitting in the hotel ballroom listening to the presentation...)

That's not to say that the reseller offering here will be bad, just that like any other business, it will require work and input from the person doing the reselling for a decent profit to be realized. (No, that's not a bad thing.)

[zevin]

fisamo I agree, hard work will be required just like in reselling web hosting. My angle is to approach my web hosting clients.

Early on Tim told me that offering to business would be fine as long as you can pay the bills and they don't blow it up. (Tim is this still correct?)

Anyone seriously interested should, in my opinion, talk to an accountant and or attorney. I got into some serious trouble with the state comptroller over not taxing for web hosting, web design, and computer repair. Now I have a snazzy certificate to hang on my wall and a quarterly report to file.

For billing one might be able to use WHMCS and it's API to handle billing...

[VOIPoTim]

Yes, there are no really restrictions of what you can do as long as it's legal and you pay for the usage associated with it. So you can offer residential service, business service, voicemail only boxes, setup an Asterisk server for a business and run the traffic through an account, BYOD, etc. This usage-based model allows us to give you guys a lot of flexibility.

The only thing we cannot allow is automatic dialer/call blasting traffic.

[VOIPoTim]

To answer your questions.

1) LNP is still pending. We have been transitioning to a third-party LNP provider recently and going all paperless with it, so we are still factoring in how the paperless process will work with resellers. More info soon.

2) Full E911 service can be activated on an account for $1/Mo. If you activate it, your user will also be able to update their address/manage it in their control panel just like you can as a VOIPo customer.

E911 is required in the US by the FCC for full-service (two-way) accounts. Since many users will resell outside of the country or offer partial services vs two-way, we are leaving this up to the reseller. We'll provide the ability to add E911 to any account, but won't be requiring it on any resold accounts since we don't know the circumstances surrounding the account and are acting as a wholesale provider.

3) Offering business service is fine.

4) Every user has a control panel similar to vPanel. You as the reseller have a master panel to manage accounts, add new ones, set limits, etc. In your panel, you can also setup a logo/company name which will be used in all of your user panels so that it's fully branded.

The user panel is very similar to vPanel. It has all very similar functionality except the BETA features are not offered due to support concerns with them. You can disable specific pages in it through the use of "account templates". So if you wanted to charge extra for some features, you could create different control panel templates with certain features not in them and only assign the "full" one to some users.

[goldentouch]

ticket JVQ-423910
local number porting.....

the majority of new clients would like to keep their number they have had for years. if lnp to voipo.com is possible why wouldnt it be possible for resellers?

[VOIPoTim]

ticket JVQ-423910
local number porting.....

the majority of new clients would like to keep their number they have had for years. if lnp to voipo.com is possible why wouldn't it be possible for resellers?

We're still determining how to structure it and the costs for resellers. Basically it all depends on what upstream carriers are involved. In metro areas, we don't pay for number transfers so we can offer this for free or very low cost in those areas.

In smaller areas where we use secondary carriers like Level3, the cost goes up a lot and varies.

We are working on a way to structure this so that we can offer it free or low cost in the areas we can and for a small fee in the other areas.

I don't have anything online showing the breakdown yet, but for anyone interested here is one of my millions of spreadsheets I can share.

http://www.voipo.com/RC-Jan09.xls

Everything in Tier 0 will be free/very very low cost. The higher the tier to more expensive it is to provide numbers in that area.

Once we have the details worked out, we'll post more. Should be within the next few days.

[zevin]

I am in tier 3

It's got to cost buckets... great!

[Brian]

Interesting spreadsheet. Based on my local area, it seems that most providers (including Google Voice) keep lots of the Tier 0 numbers readily available, but the higher tiers, not so much. Any connection?