Several prospective resellers, and even a curious employee or two have asked how much it takes to put your own VoIP business. By this, I mean setting up the hardware and software, management systems and the other tangible investments necessary. What sounds like a simple question is actually not.
You see, to get set up as a reseller of a good-quality wholesale VoIP company, you only need $5,000 maximum. To set up your own, you need at least 100X that amount.
To start your own VoIP business from scratch, you need to set up several systems. For instance, just to service two customers, you need at least two trunking sources and a system to manage these in terms of their rating, routing and fail-over capacities. When you set these up, you should do so such that you can track trunk failures to specific destinations.
Then, you would need a system to manage end user connections. Alongside this, if you want to service residential clients, you need a system that automatically configures and reconfigures ATAs in the field.
And, of course, your VoIP phone service needs features that, at least, match the features that traditional phone users have gotten used to. So, you will need a feature controller system and voice mail services for end users. You also need to set up call waiting three-way calling, call forwarding and the like. These features require extra systems, or feature servers/ class 5 switches.
You will also need user interfaces or control panels where your users can set up/configure these features. You need databases for this and full-featured web servers that can back all this up. Plus, you should have switching systems in place that can be controlled via database or direct web APIs.
On the customer service side, you should have a technical support system, billing platform with recurring and extra billing capabilities, merchant account and fraud monitoring systems. Your fraud monitoring system should be extra reliable. Inept fraud monitoring exposes your clients’ data to online scams and even terrorism.
To do all this, you need at least: two database servers, two web servers, two session border controllers, two class 4 switch servers, two class 5 switch servers, two voicemail servers, and a redundant network-accessible mass storage system for voicemail. And these are only for a maximum of 2,000 users. You need more hardware if you want to serve more users.
Some have argued that the software component in VoIPs shouldn’t cost as much – what with all the free software available. The truth is these free software end up being more expensive. For one thing, all free PBX software can’t be used for residential users. You need different software for that. Plus, these free software need a session border controller; otherwise, they won’t be effective. Even the plain old asterisk needs dialplans to actually do things. You will need some capital to have those developed.
When it comes to softswitches, there are cheap options. You can find some within the range of $5,000 to $30,000. However, these are designed as “call shops” or “dial-around.” They are unsuitable for end-user dial tone delivery. The least you have to pay for when it comes to switches strong enough to serve real end users starts at around $65,000. Prices differ according to their capabilities and load. Those with features for real end user service start at $150,000.
Adding all this up, it’s clear why many entrepreneurs just turn to wholesale VoIP providers. You won’t need a humongous amount of money. It’s easy to get set up. And, you can follow through with your marketing plan right away.
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