Searching for IP Services - Part II

David Byrd : Raven Call
David Byrd
David Byrd is the Founder and Chief Creative Officer for Raven Guru Marketing. Previously, he was the CMO and EVP of Sales for CloudRoute. Prior to CloudRoute, He was CMO at ANPI, CMO & EVP of Sales at Broadvox, VP of channels and Alliances for Telcordia and Director of eBusiness development with i2 Technologies.He has also held executive positions with Planet Hollywood Online, Hewlett-Packard, Tandem Computers, Sprint and Ericsson.
| Raven Guru Marketing http://www.ravenguru.com/

Searching for IP Services - Part II

I had hoped to have similar reviews of the SIP Trunking offerings between AT&T and Verizon. However, it is not possible without a phone call to Verizon. I didn't have time to do that so I'll go with what I got.

Verizon is clearly not serious about a SIP Trunking offering. They provide some technical and reassuring information on their website but no pricing, equipment or installation details. This is not good, as most of us know that an SMB in particular does not want to waste time sitting in a queue to speak with a sales representative. Moreover, I had hoped one of the Verizon partners might have posted the pricing but again, I could not find anything. The summary of their offering is similar to everyone else, including Broadvox. They offer unlimited local calling, discounted long distance, directory listing, E911, etc.

One unique statement was that they would provide SIP over another ISP's DIA (Dedicated Internet Access). This was interesting because AT&T, Cbeyond and others do not offer SIP unless the customer utilizes their broadband. I would have never suspected that Verizon was a BYOB IP carrier, Bring Your Own Broadband.

Being a BYOB carrier will be the wave of the future as broadband connection quality continues to improve. A direct connection is not necessary to offer a quality SIP Trunking product and as peering agreements expand in the IP community, consistent quality levels will be noted as well.  Additionally, it just makes business sense to avoid forcing a customer cancel existing agreements thereby facing potential early termination fees.

For the record, if a customer or VAR is interested in knowing our product pricing they can download the information for GO!Local, GO!Anywhere, or GO!Domestic directly from our website. Of course, that means competitors can do so as well. But, isn't that also the point. Voice communications has been a commodity for quite some time. We make no attempt to differentiate our VoIP/SIP Trunking product offering from other ITSPs based upon price. Our value proposition is our private network, SIP engineering experience and support organization.

Today, SIP Trunking is still the purview of the smaller ITSPs like Broadvox. We openly communicate and compete for this growing business. We keep an eye on companies like Comcast and Vonage and are guarded in our comments regarding their efforts. However, we still wait for the sleeping giants to awaken and enter the market with gusto. Then things will get very interesting. In the meantime, check out SIP Trunk.org for the serious players today.

Have a great weekend! Enjoy the Super Bowl and great eats!



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