Noel's Muses

For the purpose of this article, the terms VoIP and SIP are interchangeable. The following is related to Australian VoIP and SIP Trunk providers, but no doubt this same mess exists in other parts of the world, hopefully just not to the same extent as here. I know the recent Traced Act in the U.S.A. which mandates STIR/SHAKEN has weeded out a number of cowboys in the U.S. market because just getting the regulatory compliances has huge hurdles to overcome, and with competition in Australia slim compared to the U.S., I'd hate to see an identical Act introduced here - despite liking the intent of the idea (we're all sick to death of those spoofed calls from that western Asian country trying to fix our windows or renew our Amazon for us ) well, at least not with the same compliance complexities, it would kill off many of the decent little guys, leaving us back at square one with a couple of independent VoIP providers and the likes of the price gouging incumbents, and we never want to go back there!

I've seen claims from some providers they've been around ten years, yet ABR current and historical data does not reflect that, others who claim to have been around for years but ABR data shows they were trading in another field until recently, next we have those who claim to have been around for years selling billions of minutes a year, but GST data does not reflect that. If it smells fishy...

Then there are the more serious impacts, like those with half-arsed billing systems, generating (but not sending) separate invoices for DIDs (phone numbers) and another for calls, you do get payment notice Emails for DID transactions at least, but not for Call transactions - which is a huge failure, you have to go in and do some data matching on the issued invoices against your bank statements and match it to your dwindling credit (since this provider does not do automatic debiting) every so often, making your work harder keeping tabs on available credit. All of these points were brought up with them but they just repeat the mantra "I'll pass it on to management"... FFS your primary business is SIP Trunking, that's a business product, businesses should not have to stuff around like this, they have enough to do running their day to day operations, so just fix it already! You can't possibly be taken serious by businesses billing like this, but sadly it doesn't end just there for them.

Now the more serious of the failures, morally wrong at best, criminally wrong at worst, that same provider double dips charging if you obtain additional numbers, they do not pro rata, they charge you for all numbers on the date of your first DID, to understand better, lets say you sign up on the 1st of July, you get just one number because you want to test their service out, around 28th of July you're happy and order your extra numbers (in small business this is very common, so home users and geeks can stop shaking their heads wondering WTF I'm on about), OK, so they pay for those extra DIDs in full on July 28, however, because you first signed up on the 1st of July, the 1st of August is your actual anniversary billing date, so, three days later, on August 1, you are billed for all DID's again, at full price - how the fuck that is legal is beyond me, or has nobody reported it to Qld's Office of Fair Trading? I guess not, either way, it's not a sign of a professional organisation, perhaps it reflects the true state of their user-base, being majority forum fans and geeks - not businesses, which is strange, since SIP Trunking is a business product, not a home user product, perhaps this is why in more recent times they have also released a Hosted PBX product, but until they get their act together with billing... I mean whatever they use for it is clearly useless, maybe they use excel

And something else that was brought to my attention recently, again with that same provider, yep, it just goes from bad to worse, is that you can't call between two DID services on their network, you end up with a All circuits are busy message, apparently they expect you to call on-net using the customer Trunk number (WTF, like... who is going to know that, or what it is, let a alone you have to) because calling their on-net DID to DID does not work. This is a SIP Trunk - a business grade product FFS, they have told people that's a current limitation they have in their network - unbelievable, I've never heard of an enterprise level soft switch that can't do this, it's the most basic of things any voice provider needs, for person one to call person two, even if person two is on the same damn providers network, can you imagine if Telstra said this.... It just goes to show their entire "network", a term I use lightly, is a complete train wreck, my advice to them is to employ someone who knows VoIP, someone who knows billing systems.

Next in the firing line is those who don't understand telecommunications, these providers are easily visible because they try sell or offer "extras" on SIP Trunks. SIP Trunks are exactly that, a trunk, think of it as the link, a bare metal like connection, they are only for those who have their own local PBX (phone system). The PBX is what provides all those services, like voicemail, IVR's, ring groups, and everything else, all the phones register to the local PBX, so why the hell do they try tell SIP Trunks with ring groups and other useless junk, it shows they actually have no understanding of what Trunks are or perhaps the Telco industry in general, those types of extras are only of use for Hosted PBX's, where customers end users phones register to the Hosted or cloud (gawd I hate that term) based PBX, where you are paying for that type of service and its extras because your too small to have your own local PBX.

As mentioned, SIP Trunking is a bare metal service, so what also annoys the hell out of me is some providers charge even more for Trunk plans than for Hosted PBX plans, and I'm not talking just about unlimited plans, even PAYG SIP Trunk plans cost more than Hosted PBX with some providers. There is one provider I'm aware of that sells both services, where with one channel (channel = line) the SIP Trunk is 12% more expensive than that same companies Hosted plan, yes, 12% more compared to one who has to have everything provided for them - how can that be justified? ( Remember - I'm talking business comparisons only here, I know some providers discount heavily a Hosted VoIP service for residential users, I get that, and why, and I like the fact they do it.)

Moving on... even though all of this is in the public domain, I am struggling to show restraint in not naming these providers.

I'm not advocating for the big, more traditional voice players either, because although they generally have reliable and working systems, they still think it's the 1990's PSTN days - charging like wounded bulls, over priced with often useless outsourced third-world-country support (a term I use incredibly lightly), not to mention other RSP's/ISP's who will only sell you a VoIP or SIP Trunk service if you are on-net, meaning you have to have your Internet service with them first - AKA vendor lock-in!

My last point, well it's really out of everyone's hands, it happened starting two years ago, it's when you find yourself in a happy long term VoIP relationship for years with a stable, reliable and well known voice provider, when all of a sudden they decide small business and home users are not profitable, so to cut costs by sticking to their core business - enterprise, government and wholesale, they sell off the little guys to a relatively unknown business, who over the following two years have shown how incompetent they are, destroying any good wills, they take you off the stable working wholesale service and on to their new (allegedly) own platform, which is broken in many ways, then they tell you you're going from paying only for calls with no DID fees, or minimal DID fees like $5 a year, to $5 a month plus calls on their new platform, no doubt many readers know who I refer to, that along with the many screw-ups in their migration has led to a mass exodus to various other voice providers.

If nothing else, this article shows that you really do need to perform serious due diligence on any new phone service provider you are considering, and remember, review sites like trust pilot, google and facebook reviews, amongst others - are useless, they have long been infiltrated by staff, agents, resellers, and paid-for bots and services, all painting businesses and products in a good light burying any negativity, you need to find comments in forums (eg: overclockers and can't believe I'm about to say this... but... even... reddit ) and mailing lists, they are more likely to be honest and genuine opinions. I stop short at calling for regulation, because that will only favour those with deep pockets and a floor full of lawyers, but something needs to be done to rid the industry of cowboys, if other small players can do it right, there is no reason all of them can't.

I'm not saying Telstra and Optus being traditionalists, are who you should trust, there are a number of non traditional voice service providers out there, and I use them, that have equal reliability, but superior service and support, and at reasonable cost.

For those who say "nobody needs land lines, go mobile" let me know how that works out for you when you get a call from your financial institution or the tax office, or even your Telco, with a mobile caller ID Ahhh the forum fanboys who can't see past the end of their noses never fail to provide us entertainment with their bias and ignorances.

So if you're offered a VoIP or SIP Trunk service for next to nothing, it's like they say - If it sounds too good to be true... It probably is...