One thing to do is shore up your most profitable customers.
Re-contract them. Add services for them. And survey them. Why do they buy from you; What other communication needs to they have; What challenges do they see in technology.

Video tape a testimonial from your best customers about why they pay you for dedicated service and run it on your website. It will be an advertsiement for you and for them.

• Know your customer.
• Stay in front of your customer.
• Upsell and cross-sell your customer.
• Get Referrals from your customer.
• Everyone in your business needs to understand that every single touch with the customer or prospect is a chance to win or lose. Make it a win. Script answers to frequently asked questions.
• And have a scripted answer to this question: "Why should I pay you more when DSL is so much less?" (BTW, that is called a buying signal and/or objection. The prospect is giving you the opportunity to sell them on your service).

Sales skills are what put food on the table. Read a couple of sales books or listen to audio books.  Or, if you can, get a sales coach. He can shadow a few of your calls or role play with you to help you through difficult or uncomfortable situations. Call today for sales help... 813-963-5884




Asterisk
can it scale?     * To: isp-clec@isp-clec.com
    * Subject: RE: [isp-clec] VoIP Feature Servers (Asterisk bashing)
    * From: John Todd <jtodd@loligo.com>
    * Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 23:28:42 -0700


All -

There are systems that are and have been running hundreds of thousands of calls (or "events" since the term "call" is starting to lose it's meaning) per day through Asterisk servers or server clusters, creating large revenues and with acceptable quality to the customers. If you keep your requirements simple and segmented, and you REALLY know what you're doing, Asterisk is a very cost-effective solution for many VoIP tasks. It is not an SS7 gateway (though third-party products exist for this) and lacks support for many "industry" standards which otherwise would be selling points of commercial software if you're acronym-inclined. There are TDM interface cards which work well with Asterisk, but if you're using it for terminating T3's worth of TDM, then you probably should be looking elsewhere for IP-to-TDM gear (at least for the simple conversion process.) Many people are running 8-12 T1's worth in single chassis configurations with decent results, so sizing is all a matter of what the individual circumstances are for investment, abilities, and localized criteria. Outside of the United States, Asterisk is becoming the de-facto standard for newer carriers, at least from my biased view judging by the questions on the Asterisk mailing lists and that which I hear at various conferences on the topic of carrier use of the software.

As a feature server it also works very well. You may be using Asterisk in some form or another if you utilize voicemail from some of the larger VoIP carriers whose names would sound familiar to you. As a VoIP router in many situations, it works similarly well. Calling it "broken by design" is misleading and inflammatory, and the assertion that forks are a sign of failure is like saying that Linux must be fundamentally unsound since there are so many different varieties of distributions. It is my belief that Asterisk forks exist due to differences of opinion on how to perform the same task, and also license issues with Digium's version of the GPL which includes a commercial disclaimer. This is the same for any open-source project with such a huge developer community who has commercial interest in the code that drives them to seek perfection in their own ways even if it differs from the group. That is encouraged, and will serve to make Asterisk a more polished software platform as those changes are woven in over time.

Additionally, this is the "isp-clec" list, so I suspect that Brian's assertion that "these are carriers here" is probably not applicable to the bulk of the list members - it seems that these are ISPs and IP data network people who have been moving into the voice world, not the other way around. They understand non-certified gear, unwarranted software, and piecemeal solutions since that's the only way they've remained alive for the past ten years. I recall installing disguised "pirate" non-NEBS compliant equipment in telco facilities quite some years back from a startup company called Cisco...

Brian B is correct at least in that there is no name-brand support for these type of operations, save Digium. Asterisk is lacking a significant VAR channel due to it's (mostly) open-source nature, and also has a long-lamented (by me) problem of the very high-end users keeping their mouths shut and their patches to themselves. There is a significant developer community who has invested more time and effort into Asterisk than possibly any of the commercial solutions currently deployed, and the open-source model seems to be working well in this case. QC is still questionable as feature sets expand, but is getting better with the "stable" releases.

If you are looking for an out-of-the-box solution, stay away from Asterisk. If you need a GUI, a nationwide 24/7 support organization, or don't have someone who can write C code on staff, then you should remove Asterisk from your telco-level deployment option list. However, if you were an early Linux embracer, and you like to be able to be flexible with your abilities on inexpensive hardware, then Asterisk is for you and can bring excellent return on investment with the appropriate planning.

Any organization who is considering operating a VoIP feature server of some type would be remiss to not review Asterisk for themselves and ignore both my applause and Brian B's contempt. Test it for yourself and see if it fits your business and product requirements.


PS: I'll pick my wording very carefully here to revise Peter's comment on my behalf: "There are no single backplane servers running Asterisk currently to my knowledge that have been rigorously tested with 30,000 or more simultaneous channels of mixed SIP signalling and RTP data, but that is well within the possible scope of a small set of Asterisk platforms designed for the task." Currently, NDAs prevent me from being more inclusive in that statement, but some surfing around with Google or the mailing list archives will find lots of small companies who are doing unusual things with Asterisk scaling.

JT

Open Source Applications in the Enterprise Is open source ready for primetime? Learn how Commercial Open Source is changing the software market by placing users in control. Thursday, May 25 @ 2 PM ET

CALEA
one more bump in the voip road
The FCC has issued an order requiring CALEA compliance by "facilities-based broadband Internet access providers and providers of interconnected VoIP" by May 14, 2007.  In addition, affected providers must submit a system security manual to the FCC within 90 days of the order being published in the Federal Register.  The manual, along with on-going reports, must explain, in detail, how CALEA compliance is being met.

The FCC order has left some issues unresolved.  For instance, the agency has not clearly defined what "call identifying information" will be required for law enforcement and what the agency considers "reasonably available" to be.  The FCC has stated that providers will be able to recover costs associated with CALEA compliance, but has not detailed how. 

The new order has been left ambiguous enough to allow the FCC to make regulatory adjustments as the market matures.

Audio conference by CCMI: CALEA and VoIP: Countdown to Compliance
June 1 @ 2:00 - 3:30pm ET



Cable VoIP Requires Truck Rolls
$140 per visit Telecomweb cites "A huge percentage of cable-company voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) customers - some 34 percent - report needing on-site technical support to get their VoIP lines to work, according to a new survey commissioned by SupportSoft and done by online market research firm Decipher Inc."

The issue isn't trivial. Marc Itzkowitz, SupportSoft's director of product marketing and management, points to estimates by the Yankee Group that each truck roll costs an average of $130 - and actually more. "The truck roll costs are actually underestimated by 7 percent," he says, because they don't include costs such as those for the customer- service representative who originally took the customer's complaint call. "It (costs) between $7 and $10 for the customer to call in that there's a problem.

According to the survey,

• 18% of cable VoIP customers needed one visit by a technician
• 11% needed two or three visits
• 3% needed four or more visits
• 2% said they had lost count of how many visits.

The reasons a VoIP truck roll was needed:

• 12% - the VoIP transmission was hard to understand
• 10% - fluctuating voice volume.
  
• 10% - problems with their VoIP adapters.
  
• 7% - Problems with echoes or breaks in transmission.
• 6% - VoIP service was causing performance problems with their broadband. 
  
• More than half-a-dozen other problems were cited, each by 5 percent or fewer of those taking the survey.
  
• 61% said they didn't have any problems that required technical support.
  
• (Totals add up to more than 100 percent because those with problems were allowed to choose the two they felt were most significant.)

Show Me the Money!
e-rate & DHS 

You have your SPIN number, but what do you do now to take advantage of the E-Rate funds? COMPTEL has a webinar:  Demystifying the "E-Rate" Program

Homeland Security's State Interoperable Communications Grants
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/odp/welcome.html
http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/display?content=1738

On January 4, 2006, GW appointed Tracy A. Henke to head the Office of Grants and Training. A component of the Department of Homeland Security's Preparedness Directorate, the Office provides funding, coordinated training, exercise support, equipment, and technical assistance to states, local jurisdictions, and regional authorities to assist in preparing the nation's emergency responders to prevent, deter, and respond to terrorist acts and catastrophic disasters.   For further information on G&T grant programs, call the G&T Help Line at (800) 368-6498 or email askcsid@dhs.gov.

Every state has an administrator.   (Florida is here.)

RAD-INFO, Inc. is searching for a successful federal Grant Writer to help you win some federal dollars. Call today if you are interested in using our Grant Writer for your application.



Data Backup
storage and disaster recovery
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e-Backups allows you to Offer your customers an easy way to backup their data off-site without the need to individually purchase software, hardware and hosting services. 

We will be having a Conference Call with e-Backups about their service offering to ISPs on Thursday, June 8 at 2 PM Eastern.  Call 813-963-5884 to register.

View this no-charge on-demand Webinar from NetApp & Syncsort in three chapters here: Disk-to-Disk Application Recovery Server and Site-Level Recovery Protect Remote Sites w/out Tape

RAD-INFO, Inc.
consulting services In today's' telecom market it's critical to maintain your
Competitive EDGE.
Let RAD-INFO help you thrive rather than survive.
We will show you how you can:

Call or email today for a complimentary consultation to see how we can work with you to achieve greater results.

Meet me at an Event

Seminars

IP, P2P, VOX, I-T1, OC-x
voice, data, internet


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