For carriers and specialty providers originating Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) minutes, the problem has been traditionally that very few major carriers have been willing to show much professional respect for such operators, especially if they operate in emerging nations, in terms of competitive wholesale pricing and Terms and Conditions (Ts&Cs) for carrier2carrier network interconnects and international transit for termination, with conditions which are 'realistic' for smaller and emerging region operators. These same emerging region carriers are often burdened with unusually difficult terrain, and geographically dispersed, but often concentrated, very large population centers that presently have unusually low Teledensity and low Internet usage, often with very little high speed broadband Internet service, by the standards of Western Europe and North America.
CarrierEscrow.com typically provides 'cutting edge' Carrier Grade Solutions to help you maximize your network efficiency and increase your ROI for your stakeholders, while ensuring the high Quality of Service that your customers expect.
Historical Context:
CarrierEscrow.com typically provides 'cutting edge' Carrier Grade Solutions to help you maximize your network efficiency and increase your ROI for your stakeholders, while ensuring the high Quality of Service that your customers expect.
Historical Context:
- Even when these comparatively 'new operators' ultimately generate millions of minutes a month in outbound network traffic, the Western, professional, transit+termination gateway market has been divided into three international pricing levels - and two of them are generally considered to be very expensive, usually needlessly expensive, and are at pricing levels which trained telecommunications engineers know are no longer representative of the Real Costs of Service Provisioning for these larger and usually global carriers. Of course, the most favorable wholesale carrier2carrier pricing at the first and highest level is inaccessible to anyone but the world's largest carriers from North America and Western Europe in their relations with one another. It is commonly known that several 'rate tables' exist even among major carriers - in their offerings to smaller carriers. Notably, the worst and highest rates are offered to emerging nation based carriers (of any size, small or large) for terminating and/or transiting their outbound traffic towards the Rest of the World (ROW). This combines with tacit, unspoken agreements among some major carrier's employees to not compete with the traditional 'turf' or regional customer base of other major carriers. These wholesale carrier rate tables for work interconnecting and transiting with other carriers, and the pricing policies behind them, so to speak, are 'legacy relics' from the heady days in the 20th Century when most major carriers were state owned or licensed monopolies/quasi monopolies, and thereafter, and the pricing policies they represent exist from the time when rack equipment, compression equipment, and cabling infrastructure for voice circuits was exorbitantly expensive in terms of real costs of service provision, in comparison to today's prices.
- Although VoIP did substantially contribute to massively lowering global calling prices, the prices can still go down very far for mobile originated traffic especially and VoIP traffic with smart optimization - and still generate major new profits for operators. The obvious goal of operators, everywhere, is to increase market share and generate new profitable traffic at increasingly competitive end user pricing. Given that developed Western economies are usually super saturated in mobile and VoIP coverage by existing operators, the real markets of opportunity are clearly in emerging nations of the ROW. Clearly, a balance needs to be made in end-user pricing while remaining cognizant of the benefits needed re the ROI of emerging nation mobile and VoIP providers. This needs to be made based on a healthy mix of competitive global interconnects, good termination deals and good Ts&Cs that will allow them to increase their domestic originating traffic and well serve the ROI needs of their stakeholders - while at the same time aiding the network development and sustainable growth. Supporting this, in turn supports the development of Increased Teledensity and Internet Use, and hence, both commerce in the regions they serve and by increasing the Quality of Life of their customers by supporting the growth of local SMEs, industry, education and healthcare.
- While over-priced bulk VoIP transit and voice termination for emerging nation mobile and specialty providers in those regions has been extremely profitable for the larger international gateway providers in North America and Western Europe, it has slowed down local growth, as well as industrial and trade growth in emerging nations. This has contributed significantly to keeping regionally originating mobile and VOIP calls expensive both for the end users and for the local providers in many countries. This in turn has extracted unusual profits for major Western gateway operators out of emerging markets, weakening the indigenous local economies, and stunting local growth - which could have contributed conceivably to even higher growth and notably higher profits for Western gateway providers, if the interconnect and transit costs had been more reasonable. Satellite dependent operators in emerging nations are particularly sensitive to this problem, as carriers with under sea cable access have been less 'squeezed' by these Western wholesale pricing practices. Though the global professional relationships with in-country carriers have been changing - between emerging nation providers and the major Western carriers in the last decade - the emergence of some 'mega operators' in the VOIP industry such as Skype™, which is now part of Microsoft™, and more recently Google Talk™, have basically put many smaller VoIP operators out of business and damaged emerging nation mobile carriers - particularly those dependent on satellites for their global connectivity.
- None the less, the industry has many many smaller mobile and VoIP operators, often from emerging nations, and they usually get very high pricing offers for bulk transit and termination of their minutes when they try to connect to major international gateway operators. These high international wholesale carrier2carrier prices persist for emerging nation originating mobile and VoIP traffic, even when they have many millions of minutes a month to route - and even when the international traffic generated in those emerging regions is measurably far in excess of that produced in smaller countries in Europe, for example, which in turn have lower wholesale interconnect and global termination pricing - and often 'better' and more affordable and 'workable' Ts&Cs.
For mobile operators, and especially for those operating in emerging nations which are taking their own traffic and 'getting it out'
via satellite, they have seen this unusual problem continuing to develop but not dramatically improve. The issue is the comparatively high costs of international interconnects, IP trunking, Internet backbone capacity, and the unusually high cost of those agreements ultimately for transit+termination of calls on the Global Grid via other operators.
The CarrierEscrow.com team is well known as expert in VoIP technology, especially over satellite (notably, INTELSAT) and was the original pioneer founder in promoting the development of "international carrier grade VoIP voice service," as public network compliant quality, and sending it over satellite. However, over a decade and a half ago, the underlying laboratory technology was originally developed by a small company making studio microphones in Israel. They used it to talk for free over the Internet from their lab in Tel Aviv to their showroom in the US. The idea of the founder of Carrier Escrow was to make it into <public voice network compatible 'carrier grade' service> technology as a low-cost alternative to existing voice compression technologies, to determine how to carry it efficiently by satellite on existing INTELSAT satellites to carriers worldwide in even the most distant nations, yielding never-before-seen low prices per minute for completed calls from any phone to any phone, anywhere, and to decide how to tariff it as a public carrier network service for voice telephony that can compete and replace the existing old carrier technologies then being used for compressing and carrying public network voice calls in the 1990s. The idea was ultimately to carry everything by Internet Protocol, and initially totally replace (with IP based routing and new codecs) the fabulously expensive traditional compression equipment used in the carrier world for voice circuits. [Some of the smaller VSAT satellite modems and typical carrier voice circuit compression equipment of the period (before IP based equipment), cost as much as a nice, new, and large family car - and you always needed two, for each circuit, for necessary fall-back redundancy, of course, in public network operations.] When finally 'tracked down' in New Jersey, after several transatlantic flights and missed connections, and a meeting was finally held at their showroom, the microphone company executive told this firm's founder saying "Satellites? We don't know anything about satellites. We're finished with this technology. We just use it to talk with the lab in Tel Aviv. You can have the API for free. We have bigger fish to fry."
Several months passed, during which improvements were made by an internationally based team of volunteer engineers, software specialists and this private carrier's founder, and ultimately was created the first stable, open, 'lab style' free, public demonstration network, called VON - or Voice on the Net. Though a 'closed' demo voice network, running entirely through the Internet, stretching from both North American coasts to the Asian Pacific Rim, interconnecting a handful of developer participants, it was also directly connected to and openly terminated in the global public voice networks via Washington, D.C. From there it was possible to 'dial out' to a regular telephone number, (or dial into the international network) via a hand built node / POP-Point of Presence with unlimited free calls to North America for Internet users, worldwide - using free downloadable PC software - admittedly still totally 'experimental,' and with cannibalized old computer parts (as were used at each node), and with general but rather still 'incomplete' instructions. The demonstration service's unrestricted dial out exit into the US public networks (or dial in), with free internationally originating calls to the USA and Canada, via Washington, in both directions, was sponsored by this firm's parent. The US public networks interconnect was 'backed' by the facilities-based international carrier licenses held by the founder of this firm - in 'quiet' but open and friendly, collegial consultation with encouraging regulatory experts - notably, also in the International Division of the United States Federal Communications Commission in Washington D.C. [Outbound international calls to the Washington area were regularly used from Bejing, several times a week, typically in the Washington evenings, by a very polite, semi-retired professor/surgeon who was calling his old friend, who had emigrated to America many years before, and who was, by then, working as a secretary at the US Department of Agriculture. Their warm and deeply grateful 'thank you' emails were very touching, as they had not been able to afford calling each other very often, for many years, since she had moved to America.] None the less, this successful, experimental, international interconnect service, although entirely free, was considered 'a threat' to various existing US quasi monopoly global telecom operators, however, possibly due to the impending and foreseeable technological developments it represented that, eventually, an extremely 'low cost transmission infrastructure alternative' could force open the then still largely 'closed' international telecommunications industry sector to the prospect of new, low cost carriers being created. It even earned this firm's founder threats and various not so 'friendly' warnings about being driven out of business. Extensive informal technical discussions also started to take place, offline, about the eventual possibilities for voice and video over IP over INTELSAT satellites, with friends among the engineers at the world famous Intelsat Laboratories, in Washington.
Hence, if you went to the Fall Internet World show in New York City at the Jacob Javits Center, on December 13, 1966, and listened to the Regulatory Stream, you heard this firm's founder make the original global public presentation regarding the earliest work on the commercial directions of VON regarding what would become advanced, integrated, globe-spanning 'carrier grade' solutions of that technology, as is now known simply as Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP). While most people at the time considered it an 'exotic' hobbyist technology for free calls with distant friends, this presentation looked at, predicted and demonstrated how to build it, how to trasnparently connect it to existing terrestrial international public carrier networks for termination - including wireline and mobile, how to tariff it as public voice services, and how to carry it by satellite worldwide. Obviously, we recommended the satellite connections be done via Intelsat, of course - due to its celebrated industry Best Practices and benchmark, 'accepted global standards' based world leadership in telecommunications satellites. Of course, that IP transmission protocol work now includes voice, video, TV and other protocols in coherent and encrypted IP Trunking Streams and numerous sub protocols that are now commonly trunked together.
A new global industry was born.
"Interconnect Techniques & Rate Aspects of VON Assisted Global Communications:
Extending the Internet Via Satellite..."
via satellite, they have seen this unusual problem continuing to develop but not dramatically improve. The issue is the comparatively high costs of international interconnects, IP trunking, Internet backbone capacity, and the unusually high cost of those agreements ultimately for transit+termination of calls on the Global Grid via other operators.
The CarrierEscrow.com team is well known as expert in VoIP technology, especially over satellite (notably, INTELSAT) and was the original pioneer founder in promoting the development of "international carrier grade VoIP voice service," as public network compliant quality, and sending it over satellite. However, over a decade and a half ago, the underlying laboratory technology was originally developed by a small company making studio microphones in Israel. They used it to talk for free over the Internet from their lab in Tel Aviv to their showroom in the US. The idea of the founder of Carrier Escrow was to make it into <public voice network compatible 'carrier grade' service> technology as a low-cost alternative to existing voice compression technologies, to determine how to carry it efficiently by satellite on existing INTELSAT satellites to carriers worldwide in even the most distant nations, yielding never-before-seen low prices per minute for completed calls from any phone to any phone, anywhere, and to decide how to tariff it as a public carrier network service for voice telephony that can compete and replace the existing old carrier technologies then being used for compressing and carrying public network voice calls in the 1990s. The idea was ultimately to carry everything by Internet Protocol, and initially totally replace (with IP based routing and new codecs) the fabulously expensive traditional compression equipment used in the carrier world for voice circuits. [Some of the smaller VSAT satellite modems and typical carrier voice circuit compression equipment of the period (before IP based equipment), cost as much as a nice, new, and large family car - and you always needed two, for each circuit, for necessary fall-back redundancy, of course, in public network operations.] When finally 'tracked down' in New Jersey, after several transatlantic flights and missed connections, and a meeting was finally held at their showroom, the microphone company executive told this firm's founder saying "Satellites? We don't know anything about satellites. We're finished with this technology. We just use it to talk with the lab in Tel Aviv. You can have the API for free. We have bigger fish to fry."
Several months passed, during which improvements were made by an internationally based team of volunteer engineers, software specialists and this private carrier's founder, and ultimately was created the first stable, open, 'lab style' free, public demonstration network, called VON - or Voice on the Net. Though a 'closed' demo voice network, running entirely through the Internet, stretching from both North American coasts to the Asian Pacific Rim, interconnecting a handful of developer participants, it was also directly connected to and openly terminated in the global public voice networks via Washington, D.C. From there it was possible to 'dial out' to a regular telephone number, (or dial into the international network) via a hand built node / POP-Point of Presence with unlimited free calls to North America for Internet users, worldwide - using free downloadable PC software - admittedly still totally 'experimental,' and with cannibalized old computer parts (as were used at each node), and with general but rather still 'incomplete' instructions. The demonstration service's unrestricted dial out exit into the US public networks (or dial in), with free internationally originating calls to the USA and Canada, via Washington, in both directions, was sponsored by this firm's parent. The US public networks interconnect was 'backed' by the facilities-based international carrier licenses held by the founder of this firm - in 'quiet' but open and friendly, collegial consultation with encouraging regulatory experts - notably, also in the International Division of the United States Federal Communications Commission in Washington D.C. [Outbound international calls to the Washington area were regularly used from Bejing, several times a week, typically in the Washington evenings, by a very polite, semi-retired professor/surgeon who was calling his old friend, who had emigrated to America many years before, and who was, by then, working as a secretary at the US Department of Agriculture. Their warm and deeply grateful 'thank you' emails were very touching, as they had not been able to afford calling each other very often, for many years, since she had moved to America.] None the less, this successful, experimental, international interconnect service, although entirely free, was considered 'a threat' to various existing US quasi monopoly global telecom operators, however, possibly due to the impending and foreseeable technological developments it represented that, eventually, an extremely 'low cost transmission infrastructure alternative' could force open the then still largely 'closed' international telecommunications industry sector to the prospect of new, low cost carriers being created. It even earned this firm's founder threats and various not so 'friendly' warnings about being driven out of business. Extensive informal technical discussions also started to take place, offline, about the eventual possibilities for voice and video over IP over INTELSAT satellites, with friends among the engineers at the world famous Intelsat Laboratories, in Washington.
Hence, if you went to the Fall Internet World show in New York City at the Jacob Javits Center, on December 13, 1966, and listened to the Regulatory Stream, you heard this firm's founder make the original global public presentation regarding the earliest work on the commercial directions of VON regarding what would become advanced, integrated, globe-spanning 'carrier grade' solutions of that technology, as is now known simply as Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP). While most people at the time considered it an 'exotic' hobbyist technology for free calls with distant friends, this presentation looked at, predicted and demonstrated how to build it, how to trasnparently connect it to existing terrestrial international public carrier networks for termination - including wireline and mobile, how to tariff it as public voice services, and how to carry it by satellite worldwide. Obviously, we recommended the satellite connections be done via Intelsat, of course - due to its celebrated industry Best Practices and benchmark, 'accepted global standards' based world leadership in telecommunications satellites. Of course, that IP transmission protocol work now includes voice, video, TV and other protocols in coherent and encrypted IP Trunking Streams and numerous sub protocols that are now commonly trunked together.
A new global industry was born.
"Interconnect Techniques & Rate Aspects of VON Assisted Global Communications:
Extending the Internet Via Satellite..."
Ultimately, many other highly specialized engineering and technology firms, worldwide, did various parts of the voice and video related R&D, and development continues, of course. None the less, today and everyday, around the world, uncounted millions benefit from this relatively recent industry-wide revolution and continuing evolution in transmission technology, which is now, thankfully, 'commonplace.' As predicted, Costs of Service Provisioning for carriers and 'international and domestic calling costs' for end users -everywhere- plummeted, and truly massive numbers of new jobs were created, worldwide, in the process. No longer seen as something 'exotic,' it is often now simply seen as some part of the Internet; and it is transparently and easily used by tens of millions of non-technical people and families, everywhere, every day - most of the time, without their even knowning that they are using it - on their PC, notebook or tablet, or in their mobile phones, for example. Voice Over IP, and later Video over IP, have become truly a 'success story' in global and collaborative, private sector, telecommunications engineering development.
CarrierEscrow.com is pleased to work with you and your carrier to show you how to get the current and emerging most effective
Carrier Grade results in both globe-spanning transmission and the most profitable global interconnects for your outgoing mobile, VOIP and
IP Trunking streams of Voice, Internet, Video, TV news and special events / sports uplinks, general Television broadcasting, global specialty niche market television broadcasting, narrow casting, supervisory control and data acquisition / SCADA, and other data, including for transit and termination, worldwide, to increase your stakeholders' ROI, to stimulate your network's sustainable growth, and to help you to increase your overall market share.
CarrierEscrow.com is pleased to work with you and your carrier to show you how to get the current and emerging most effective
Carrier Grade results in both globe-spanning transmission and the most profitable global interconnects for your outgoing mobile, VOIP and
IP Trunking streams of Voice, Internet, Video, TV news and special events / sports uplinks, general Television broadcasting, global specialty niche market television broadcasting, narrow casting, supervisory control and data acquisition / SCADA, and other data, including for transit and termination, worldwide, to increase your stakeholders' ROI, to stimulate your network's sustainable growth, and to help you to increase your overall market share.
Safe@CarrierEscrow.com = Safer & Better + One-Stop Global Settlements + Neutral Interconnects
Americas +1 310 463 7776, E/MEA/APR +420 775 211 880, FAX +44 870 1329 417
Americas +1 310 463 7776, E/MEA/APR +420 775 211 880, FAX +44 870 1329 417