No-commit international calling
Hi all, I have an asterisk PBX for personal/business use. I use Flowroute for both origination and termination. Recently I've started needing to make some international calls (specifically mostly to the UK, but also some other places in Europe and Australia). There've been a few numbers where completion is very hit-or-miss, and a few that seem not to work at all (in both cases I get a SIP 500 back from the carrier). I'm wondering if this is a carrier issue - maybe Flowroute just has low-quality routes to some destinations? I'd like to try other carriers, and ideally keep a second one as a fallback, but I'm not sure who's out there with no commit. Looks like voip.ms is one option. Does anyone have any other suggestions? Thanks, Ross
On 2023-07-13 14:34, Ross Tajvar via VoiceOps wrote:
Looks like voip.ms <http://voip.ms> is one option. Does anyone have any other suggestions?
I use voip.ms for my personal tinkering.? I don't have much of a /need/ for them, since I operate an entire telephone company of my own (my employer's).? But I do use voip.ms on my FreeSWITCH server at home for some call scenarios.? For example, I have an 8xx number with them, to my house.? I have been happy with voip.ms. I had a UK number with voip.ms for a few months, for testing purposes.? It worked reliably, at least in the limited testing scenario we were using it for. Other than that, most all of my voip.ms calls have been to US destinations.
TLDR; Global routing is getting messier and messier. Get a few carriers in route for intl calls. Anything other than a BUSY should fail to the next carrier in route. Global routing has been a cluster **** as of lately. Two issues have risen as of late. The first is countries cracking down on spam traffic. Lots of countries (Australia, UK etc.) are forcing carriers to watch the traffic coming in a lot closer. The second is the rates. A few years back the EEA put in regulation that inter EEA calls need to be charged the same low rates. The carriers started a two tier billing system. If the CLI was in the EEA it was the lower rate and if the CLI was non EEA it was billed at a higher rate, there were some exceptions. This set off a chain reaction. South Africa was next. Wholesale was about 0.025 per minute for Mobile. Overnight inter SA calls were charged the same while calls from outside SA were charged at 0.16 per minute. In SA they were more strict and spoofing CLI didn't help. It took about 1-2 years for the routes to stabilize. Tier1 carriers had GSM gateways in route (we proved this by using iTest). Carrier started spoofing CLI to EEA countries with a local number (e.g. if they called Germany they made up a number that started with 49). This led the German carriers to charge a higher rate if calls to Germany came with a local CLI (it's still cheaper if the CLI is from another EEA Country). The Israeli carriers recently started charging an extra 0.10 per minute if the calls come from out of the country. This led the UK carriers to raise their rates. Where the CLI to UK calls is Israeli, they started charging 0.30 per minute. Currently BICS has more route exceptions for pricing than they do have actual routes. There is a lot more here and I can talk for hours on the subject. Carriers want to advertise/offer the best route to win your business. So say Cyprus cost 0.10 per minute for non EEA CLI, if a carrier has a GSM gateway option that costs them 0.02 per minute they will issue you a rate of say 0.3 per minute and if the GW is busy simply reject your calls. This they they win whatever traffic you have going to them based on your A-Z routing. I would tell you to look at: Voxbeam IDT (Net2Phone) - Ask them for their platinum rate deck, I would not go any lower. My 9-5 is the equiv of a CLEC in Cyprus and our "specialty" is getting good quality routes. If the others don't work free to email me off list and I can try to help out. On Thu, Jul 13, 2023 at 3:34?PM Ross Tajvar via VoiceOps < voiceops at voiceops.org> wrote:
Hi all,
I have an asterisk PBX for personal/business use. I use Flowroute for both origination and termination.
Recently I've started needing to make some international calls (specifically mostly to the UK, but also some other places in Europe and Australia). There've been a few numbers where completion is very hit-or-miss, and a few that seem not to work at all (in both cases I get a SIP 500 back from the carrier).
I'm wondering if this is a carrier issue - maybe Flowroute just has low-quality routes to some destinations? I'd like to try other carriers, and ideally keep a second one as a fallback, but I'm not sure who's out there with no commit.
Looks like voip.ms is one option. Does anyone have any other suggestions?
Thanks, Ross _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
Ill Totally agree with Dovid here, It's a huge mess, and a massive PITA, and this kind of thing have the possibility be the demise of the voice industry. (because it will force more traffic to OTT communications) I built and operate a Tier 1 in Australia, and I know that as a result of Scam / Spam call regulation, the whole CLI presentation thing is just all over the shop. 1 Carrier has started with an automated IVR ( "Press 1 to connect your call" ) if they dont like your traffic, in an attempt to cut down on robocall's to their customers. Another has just notified that they are now not accepting international CLI to their customers, and / or are restricting it heavily on some paths. It's gotten SO bad infact, that part of me wishes for something like STIR/SHAKEN just so we have an industry wide standard, rather than the wild west we have right now. If you have good / clean traffic to Australia, you can hit me up. If it's only a few hundred $$ per month, I'm going to direct you to our retail offering, sorry. On Fri, 14 Jul 2023 at 07:16, Dovid Bender via VoiceOps < voiceops at voiceops.org> wrote:
TLDR; Global routing is getting messier and messier. Get a few carriers in route for intl calls. Anything other than a BUSY should fail to the next carrier in route.
Global routing has been a cluster **** as of lately. Two issues have risen as of late. The first is countries cracking down on spam traffic. Lots of countries (Australia, UK etc.) are forcing carriers to watch the traffic coming in a lot closer. The second is the rates. A few years back the EEA put in regulation that inter EEA calls need to be charged the same low rates. The carriers started a two tier billing system. If the CLI was in the EEA it was the lower rate and if the CLI was non EEA it was billed at a higher rate, there were some exceptions. This set off a chain reaction. South Africa was next. Wholesale was about 0.025 per minute for Mobile. Overnight inter SA calls were charged the same while calls from outside SA were charged at 0.16 per minute. In SA they were more strict and spoofing CLI didn't help. It took about 1-2 years for the routes to stabilize. Tier1 carriers had GSM gateways in route (we proved this by using iTest). Carrier started spoofing CLI to EEA countries with a local number (e.g. if they called Germany they made up a number that started with 49). This led the German carriers to charge a higher rate if calls to Germany came with a local CLI (it's still cheaper if the CLI is from another EEA Country). The Israeli carriers recently started charging an extra 0.10 per minute if the calls come from out of the country. This led the UK carriers to raise their rates. Where the CLI to UK calls is Israeli, they started charging 0.30 per minute. Currently BICS has more route exceptions for pricing than they do have actual routes. There is a lot more here and I can talk for hours on the subject.
Carriers want to advertise/offer the best route to win your business. So say Cyprus cost 0.10 per minute for non EEA CLI, if a carrier has a GSM gateway option that costs them 0.02 per minute they will issue you a rate of say 0.3 per minute and if the GW is busy simply reject your calls. This they they win whatever traffic you have going to them based on your A-Z routing. I would tell you to look at: Voxbeam IDT (Net2Phone) - Ask them for their platinum rate deck, I would not go any lower.
My 9-5 is the equiv of a CLEC in Cyprus and our "specialty" is getting good quality routes. If the others don't work free to email me off list and I can try to help out.
On Thu, Jul 13, 2023 at 3:34?PM Ross Tajvar via VoiceOps < voiceops at voiceops.org> wrote:
Hi all,
I have an asterisk PBX for personal/business use. I use Flowroute for both origination and termination.
Recently I've started needing to make some international calls (specifically mostly to the UK, but also some other places in Europe and Australia). There've been a few numbers where completion is very hit-or-miss, and a few that seem not to work at all (in both cases I get a SIP 500 back from the carrier).
I'm wondering if this is a carrier issue - maybe Flowroute just has low-quality routes to some destinations? I'd like to try other carriers, and ideally keep a second one as a fallback, but I'm not sure who's out there with no commit.
Looks like voip.ms is one option. Does anyone have any other suggestions?
Thanks, Ross _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
-- Sincerely Jay
Thanks all for the replies. Jay - I'm looking for "no-commit" for a reason :) I use this for my own calls (personal and business) and spend maybe $20 in a busy month (including DIDs). If your retail offering includes a SIP product, though, I'm open to it. A higher per-minute rate (within reason) is no object given my low volume. Dovid - I took a look at the vendors you suggested. Net2Phone appears to require filling out a "contact us" form, which suggests I would need to participate in a sales process in which I'm quite disinterested. Voxbeam let me make an account right away, but has extremely onerous verification requirements for adding payment methods:
Credit Card - Payments will be accepted up to $500 in any 24 hour period. We require a copy of the latest card statement, copies of the front and back of the card (blanking out the middle 8 digits) and Government issued photo ID. This needs to be uploaded for each new card you would like to use on the Verification Documents Page. A charge of 2.5% will be deducted from payments.
Paypal Express - No limit to the amount we will accept on condition that account is FULLY VERIFIED & ADDRESS CONFIRMED. There is a charge of 2.5% fee. We require a government issued photo ID and utility bill (for example, gas bill, electricity bill, cable bill). This needs to be uploaded for each new paypal account you would like to use on the Verification Documents Page
Why anyone would consider it acceptable to provide a CC statement to a vendor is beyond me... I also have the option to make a bank payment, but 1) that takes 3-5 days, 2) I'm not keen on giving my bank details to a company I just met, and 3) I don't even know how to initiate an ACH transfer from my side. I guess I'll give voip.ms a shot - there's been no nonsense with them. -Ross On Thu, Jul 13, 2023 at 6:46?PM jay binks <jaybinks at gmail.com> wrote:
Ill Totally agree with Dovid here,
It's a huge mess, and a massive PITA, and this kind of thing have the possibility be the demise of the voice industry. (because it will force more traffic to OTT communications)
I built and operate a Tier 1 in Australia, and I know that as a result of Scam / Spam call regulation, the whole CLI presentation thing is just all over the shop.
1 Carrier has started with an automated IVR ( "Press 1 to connect your call" ) if they dont like your traffic, in an attempt to cut down on robocall's to their customers. Another has just notified that they are now not accepting international CLI to their customers, and / or are restricting it heavily on some paths.
It's gotten SO bad infact, that part of me wishes for something like STIR/SHAKEN just so we have an industry wide standard, rather than the wild west we have right now.
If you have good / clean traffic to Australia, you can hit me up. If it's only a few hundred $$ per month, I'm going to direct you to our retail offering, sorry.
On Fri, 14 Jul 2023 at 07:16, Dovid Bender via VoiceOps < voiceops at voiceops.org> wrote:
TLDR; Global routing is getting messier and messier. Get a few carriers in route for intl calls. Anything other than a BUSY should fail to the next carrier in route.
Global routing has been a cluster **** as of lately. Two issues have risen as of late. The first is countries cracking down on spam traffic. Lots of countries (Australia, UK etc.) are forcing carriers to watch the traffic coming in a lot closer. The second is the rates. A few years back the EEA put in regulation that inter EEA calls need to be charged the same low rates. The carriers started a two tier billing system. If the CLI was in the EEA it was the lower rate and if the CLI was non EEA it was billed at a higher rate, there were some exceptions. This set off a chain reaction. South Africa was next. Wholesale was about 0.025 per minute for Mobile. Overnight inter SA calls were charged the same while calls from outside SA were charged at 0.16 per minute. In SA they were more strict and spoofing CLI didn't help. It took about 1-2 years for the routes to stabilize. Tier1 carriers had GSM gateways in route (we proved this by using iTest). Carrier started spoofing CLI to EEA countries with a local number (e.g. if they called Germany they made up a number that started with 49). This led the German carriers to charge a higher rate if calls to Germany came with a local CLI (it's still cheaper if the CLI is from another EEA Country). The Israeli carriers recently started charging an extra 0.10 per minute if the calls come from out of the country. This led the UK carriers to raise their rates. Where the CLI to UK calls is Israeli, they started charging 0.30 per minute. Currently BICS has more route exceptions for pricing than they do have actual routes. There is a lot more here and I can talk for hours on the subject.
Carriers want to advertise/offer the best route to win your business. So say Cyprus cost 0.10 per minute for non EEA CLI, if a carrier has a GSM gateway option that costs them 0.02 per minute they will issue you a rate of say 0.3 per minute and if the GW is busy simply reject your calls. This they they win whatever traffic you have going to them based on your A-Z routing. I would tell you to look at: Voxbeam IDT (Net2Phone) - Ask them for their platinum rate deck, I would not go any lower.
My 9-5 is the equiv of a CLEC in Cyprus and our "specialty" is getting good quality routes. If the others don't work free to email me off list and I can try to help out.
On Thu, Jul 13, 2023 at 3:34?PM Ross Tajvar via VoiceOps < voiceops at voiceops.org> wrote:
Hi all,
I have an asterisk PBX for personal/business use. I use Flowroute for both origination and termination.
Recently I've started needing to make some international calls (specifically mostly to the UK, but also some other places in Europe and Australia). There've been a few numbers where completion is very hit-or-miss, and a few that seem not to work at all (in both cases I get a SIP 500 back from the carrier).
I'm wondering if this is a carrier issue - maybe Flowroute just has low-quality routes to some destinations? I'd like to try other carriers, and ideally keep a second one as a fallback, but I'm not sure who's out there with no commit.
Looks like voip.ms is one option. Does anyone have any other suggestions?
Thanks, Ross _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
-- Sincerely
Jay
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Hi Ross - I've used Voxbeam forever and they're pretty good, although not glitch-free with the current state of international calling as other folk have already highlighted. Their payment verification is to protect against fraud, which is also rife in the international calling sector. We just pay them by bank transfer, for which they don't require copies of all fingerprints etc. Cheers -- Dave On Fri, Jul 14, 2023 at 3:55?AM Ross Tajvar via VoiceOps < voiceops at voiceops.org> wrote:
Thanks all for the replies.
Jay - I'm looking for "no-commit" for a reason :) I use this for my own calls (personal and business) and spend maybe $20 in a busy month (including DIDs). If your retail offering includes a SIP product, though, I'm open to it. A higher per-minute rate (within reason) is no object given my low volume.
Dovid - I took a look at the vendors you suggested. Net2Phone appears to require filling out a "contact us" form, which suggests I would need to participate in a sales process in which I'm quite disinterested. Voxbeam let me make an account right away, but has extremely onerous verification requirements for adding payment methods:
Credit Card - Payments will be accepted up to $500 in any 24 hour period. We require a copy of the latest card statement, copies of the front and back of the card (blanking out the middle 8 digits) and Government issued photo ID. This needs to be uploaded for each new card you would like to use on the Verification Documents Page. A charge of 2.5% will be deducted from payments.
Paypal Express - No limit to the amount we will accept on condition that account is FULLY VERIFIED & ADDRESS CONFIRMED. There is a charge of 2.5% fee. We require a government issued photo ID and utility bill (for example, gas bill, electricity bill, cable bill). This needs to be uploaded for each new paypal account you would like to use on the Verification Documents Page
Why anyone would consider it acceptable to provide a CC statement to a vendor is beyond me...
I also have the option to make a bank payment, but 1) that takes 3-5 days, 2) I'm not keen on giving my bank details to a company I just met, and 3) I don't even know how to initiate an ACH transfer from my side.
I guess I'll give voip.ms a shot - there's been no nonsense with them.
-Ross
On Thu, Jul 13, 2023 at 6:46?PM jay binks <jaybinks at gmail.com> wrote:
Ill Totally agree with Dovid here,
It's a huge mess, and a massive PITA, and this kind of thing have the possibility be the demise of the voice industry. (because it will force more traffic to OTT communications)
I built and operate a Tier 1 in Australia, and I know that as a result of Scam / Spam call regulation, the whole CLI presentation thing is just all over the shop.
1 Carrier has started with an automated IVR ( "Press 1 to connect your call" ) if they dont like your traffic, in an attempt to cut down on robocall's to their customers. Another has just notified that they are now not accepting international CLI to their customers, and / or are restricting it heavily on some paths.
It's gotten SO bad infact, that part of me wishes for something like STIR/SHAKEN just so we have an industry wide standard, rather than the wild west we have right now.
If you have good / clean traffic to Australia, you can hit me up. If it's only a few hundred $$ per month, I'm going to direct you to our retail offering, sorry.
On Fri, 14 Jul 2023 at 07:16, Dovid Bender via VoiceOps < voiceops at voiceops.org> wrote:
TLDR; Global routing is getting messier and messier. Get a few carriers in route for intl calls. Anything other than a BUSY should fail to the next carrier in route.
Global routing has been a cluster **** as of lately. Two issues have risen as of late. The first is countries cracking down on spam traffic. Lots of countries (Australia, UK etc.) are forcing carriers to watch the traffic coming in a lot closer. The second is the rates. A few years back the EEA put in regulation that inter EEA calls need to be charged the same low rates. The carriers started a two tier billing system. If the CLI was in the EEA it was the lower rate and if the CLI was non EEA it was billed at a higher rate, there were some exceptions. This set off a chain reaction. South Africa was next. Wholesale was about 0.025 per minute for Mobile. Overnight inter SA calls were charged the same while calls from outside SA were charged at 0.16 per minute. In SA they were more strict and spoofing CLI didn't help. It took about 1-2 years for the routes to stabilize. Tier1 carriers had GSM gateways in route (we proved this by using iTest). Carrier started spoofing CLI to EEA countries with a local number (e.g. if they called Germany they made up a number that started with 49). This led the German carriers to charge a higher rate if calls to Germany came with a local CLI (it's still cheaper if the CLI is from another EEA Country). The Israeli carriers recently started charging an extra 0.10 per minute if the calls come from out of the country. This led the UK carriers to raise their rates. Where the CLI to UK calls is Israeli, they started charging 0.30 per minute. Currently BICS has more route exceptions for pricing than they do have actual routes. There is a lot more here and I can talk for hours on the subject.
Carriers want to advertise/offer the best route to win your business. So say Cyprus cost 0.10 per minute for non EEA CLI, if a carrier has a GSM gateway option that costs them 0.02 per minute they will issue you a rate of say 0.3 per minute and if the GW is busy simply reject your calls. This they they win whatever traffic you have going to them based on your A-Z routing. I would tell you to look at: Voxbeam IDT (Net2Phone) - Ask them for their platinum rate deck, I would not go any lower.
My 9-5 is the equiv of a CLEC in Cyprus and our "specialty" is getting good quality routes. If the others don't work free to email me off list and I can try to help out.
On Thu, Jul 13, 2023 at 3:34?PM Ross Tajvar via VoiceOps < voiceops at voiceops.org> wrote:
Hi all,
I have an asterisk PBX for personal/business use. I use Flowroute for both origination and termination.
Recently I've started needing to make some international calls (specifically mostly to the UK, but also some other places in Europe and Australia). There've been a few numbers where completion is very hit-or-miss, and a few that seem not to work at all (in both cases I get a SIP 500 back from the carrier).
I'm wondering if this is a carrier issue - maybe Flowroute just has low-quality routes to some destinations? I'd like to try other carriers, and ideally keep a second one as a fallback, but I'm not sure who's out there with no commit.
Looks like voip.ms is one option. Does anyone have any other suggestions?
Thanks, Ross _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
-- Sincerely
Jay
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
On 13/07/2023 20:34, Ross Tajvar via VoiceOps wrote:
I have an asterisk PBX for personal/business use. I use Flowroute for both origination and termination.
Recently I've started needing to make some international calls (specifically mostly to the UK, but also some other places in Europe and Australia). There've been a few numbers where completion is very hit-or-miss, and a few that seem not to work at all (in both cases I get a SIP 500 back from the carrier).
https://www.ziron.com/ I've not used them personally for a year or so, because I changed jobs.? And there has been a change of management.? But just worked like a dream.???? It's all prepay and you bank transfer some credit. -- Tim Bray Huddersfield, GB tim at kooky.org
This seems like a STIR/SHAKEN event... could be wrong here but this was just enforced recently. Here's one of the many threads that have taken place: https://www.mail-archive.com/voiceops at voiceops.org/msg05700.html "Mary Lou" has had some of the best content and explanations on this subject. Searching the archives for her threads may help you here as she has been quite the goto for information on this subject. Very appreciated.
On Jul 13, 2023, at 14:34, Ross Tajvar via VoiceOps <voiceops at voiceops.org> wrote:
Hi all,
I have an asterisk PBX for personal/business use. I use Flowroute for both origination and termination.
Recently I've started needing to make some international calls (specifically mostly to the UK, but also some other places in Europe and Australia). There've been a few numbers where completion is very hit-or-miss, and a few that seem not to work at all (in both cases I get a SIP 500 back from the carrier).
I'm wondering if this is a carrier issue - maybe Flowroute just has low-quality routes to some destinations? I'd like to try other carriers, and ideally keep a second one as a fallback, but I'm not sure who's out there with no commit.
Looks like voip.ms is one option. Does anyone have any other suggestions?
Thanks, Ross _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
-- J. Hellenthal The fact that there's a highway to Hell but only a stairway to Heaven says a lot about anticipated traffic volume.
Just wanted to add some more details to what Dovid mentioned. Many European countries do offer a non surcharge rate for US and Canada originated traffic. There are a few countries that put US/Canada in a different bucket where there is a surcharge, but its not the maximum. Then there are some countries where certain mobile carriers offer reduced rates but landlines and other mobile carriers don't. Some countries haven't implemented A number billing and just have a single rate no matter where the call originates from. Its a mess. As for increasing your call completion problems, make sure you and your upstream are sending the call in full E164 format for your A number and B number. I've worked the past couple years to build a product that offers US/Canada originated traffic the non surcharge rate. Its hard to market due the complications of explaining it and then potential customers not being able to normalize their A Numbers appropriately. Unfortunately its not geared for self serve low volume customers that want to put in a credit card and go because of the fraud risks I'm not ready to assume. ~Jared On Fri, Jul 14, 2023 at 6:36?AM J. Hellenthal via VoiceOps < voiceops at voiceops.org> wrote:
This seems like a STIR/SHAKEN event... could be wrong here but this was just enforced recently.
Here's one of the many threads that have taken place: https://www.mail-archive.com/voiceops at voiceops.org/msg05700.html
"Mary Lou" has had some of the best content and explanations on this subject. Searching the archives for her threads may help you here as she has been quite the goto for information on this subject. Very appreciated.
On Jul 13, 2023, at 14:34, Ross Tajvar via VoiceOps <voiceops at voiceops.org> wrote:
Hi all,
I have an asterisk PBX for personal/business use. I use Flowroute for both origination and termination.
Recently I've started needing to make some international calls (specifically mostly to the UK, but also some other places in Europe and Australia). There've been a few numbers where completion is very hit-or-miss, and a few that seem not to work at all (in both cases I get a SIP 500 back from the carrier).
I'm wondering if this is a carrier issue - maybe Flowroute just has low-quality routes to some destinations? I'd like to try other carriers, and ideally keep a second one as a fallback, but I'm not sure who's out there with no commit.
Looks like voip.ms is one option. Does anyone have any other suggestions?
Thanks, Ross _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
--
J. Hellenthal
The fact that there's a highway to Hell but only a stairway to Heaven says a lot about anticipated traffic volume.
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
participants (9)
-
abalashov＠evaristesys.com -
david.knell＠telng.com -
dovid＠telecurve.com -
jared＠compuwizz.net -
jaybinks＠gmail.com -
jhellenthal＠dataix.net -
mjohnston＠wiktel.com -
ross＠tajvar.io -
tim＠kooky.org