By Manoj Jain, COO, Bankai Group
Manoj Jain, COO, Bankai Group
There are two sides to the wholesale VoIP market. There are those carriers that sell capacity and service, including termination, which are carried over their own facilities to other carriers. In this scenario, capacity and termination services are traded among carriers to supplement one another’s facilities. Alternatively, there are also those providers, including MNOs, MVNOs, calling card companies, enterprise customers and Tier 1 carriers, which lack an in-place network entirely or in a specific geography and want to white-label and resell hosted VoIP services.
The strength of the latter group is that their marketing strategy and expertise, with the goal of creating a sustainable revenue stream, resides in front-end rather than back-end operations. The wholesaler’s strengths are the entrenched network and the resiliency, reliability and quality of service afforded by the network. It is also important to have a strong ordering and billing platform.
The key to the wholesale termination market is to assure that service providers have the needed capacity, quality of service, and ability to buy and sell termination in an efficient manner, whether at a major industry event or operator-to-operator. BridgeVoice, through its BridgeVoice Pluto platform, offers an Automated Carrier Platform through which wholesale VoIP service providers and carriers can buy, sell and trade wholesale VoIP termination services, including VoIP, SMS for carrier services, unified communications and collaboration services, and routes across a global network of operators through a secure, simple online portal. The platform enables carriers to access a selection of network providers and review pricing globally to meet capacity demands. Moreover, a carrier in one country can buy call termination from another operator in another country in a competitive marketplace that provides lower unit price and more price-quality options.
BridgeVoice also offers a white-label version of the BridgeVoice Pluto platform with all required systems and customer portals for sales acquisition, provisioning and query management with 24/7/365 support. BridgeVoice Pluto White Label Service allows non-facilities-based operators to offer services with minimal CAPEX and reduced OPEX. The white-label platform offers necessary settlement, onboarding and billing services using a convenient dashboard.
There are downsides to the wholesale termination market. With an increase in the number of carriers, there is increased competition, which is applying downward pricing pressure. Carriers on the selling side need to maintain quality assurance and beware of fraudulent traffic, bad debts, competitive rates by vendors, an increase in the number of small carriers, and low barriers to entry into the VoIP industry.
Although the VoIP termination market is facing increased competition and economic pressure, there is likely to be continuous growth in call volume and call revenue foreseeable in the next few years.