USF AND FLAT RATE PRICING PLAN (PART 2)
With the massive explosion of mobile devices fewer and fewer telecom providers continue to charge their customers based on usage, at least usage that’s as specifically defined as it was back in 1996. These days pricing tends to follow the model of flat-rate pricing, which basically states “a call is a call is a call is a call.”
Local calls and interstate calls now cost the same amount of money and get tallied together in the same column. And that’s to say nothing of the various other simplified payment plans that really mess with the idea of the USF’s tax plan. How can you accurately tax interstate communication if it’s included within an unlimited calling plan? How much of the cost of an unlimited calling plan’s price goes towards providing interstate communication?
USF and Flat-Rate Pricing Plan (Part 1)
After some deliberation the government decided to throw this tax on each provider’s interstate end-user revenue. This sounds reasonable at first. After all, every involved segment of the telecom industry produces interstate end-user revenue. But the government failed to spot a really powerful trend in the telecom industry, one that wouldn’t hit full bloom until well after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 passed, one that now dominates the telecom industry and throws a big-old wrench in this now defunct, but still operative, fee.
And that big-old wrench is known as the flat-rate pricing plan.
Do I need a VoIP Expert to Configure My PBX?
There’s nothing more common than a business buying a new, advanced VoIP solution and then using that system or hosted PBX service in the exact same way they used their old, out-dated telephone system. People naturally fear what they don’t understand, and when confronted with the host of fresh, initially perplexing features provided by their hosted PBX or premise-based VoIP system, most business owners avoid tapping these complex powers for fear of causing unforeseen problems.
VoIP SPAM as We Know It
…combining caller screening with whitelists and blacklists are the most cost-effective and practical solutions to reducing business VoIP spam. That is why we are strongly considering adding it to the DLS Hosted PBX product roadmap.
A Word About YOUR Call Recording Storage
Call recording storage is not something most providers often speak of. It is considered an inner working of their infrastructure and usually is not visible to the public eye. Yet it is important for YOU to know that your hosted system is provisioned to record and keep all the calls you want it to. One of … Read more
Hosted PBX 4.0 Rolls Out to Customers
DLS Hosted PBX is a Unified Communications platform intended for users that are looking for versatile telephony features in single-vendor business phone service and network solutions provider. DLS Hosted PBX VoIP services are delivered over the Internet, VPN or private connection.
Disruptive Nature of Automated Transcription and Call Indexing
Automated Transcription Service is one advanced feature that many PBX users anticipate to arrive at some point in the future. Such service would open doors to some interesting and perhaps the most controversial options available to PBX owners today: when a phone system integrates this service it could automatically produce a text transcription of every single inbound and outbound phone call moving through your system, store it in a database and provide search and reporting capability a-la Google. For example, one could run a query and search all calls pertaining to a specific subject matter based on search criteria. Wow, that sounds a bit spooky!
The Bizarre Persistence of Toll Free Numbers
In today’s VoIP telephony world there is little to none fiscal benefit to the continued prevalence of 1-800 numbers. These numbers exist, however, for totally different reasons
Freedom to Choose Your Voice Service Provider?
Recent trends in franchising operations show new approach to unified communications severely limiting franchisees freedom of choosing their own voice service provider. Franchise operators are strongly suggesting their agents to use corporate-owned systems and services by implementing the kind of subtly coercive pressure franchise operators can employ to make it sound like their agents have a choice in the matter.
Questions to Ask Hosted PBX Service Provider References
Signing up for a new VoIP Hosted PBX service is a big deal, and a decision you don’t want to make lightly. I assure you that you could care less about 30 or 60 day free trials or all sorts of money back guarantees because these offers will not cover even half the cost of your transition costs to the new VoIP service. While it’s tempting to simply go with the cheapest Hosted PBX service you can find, the best way to learn whether a hosted PBX provider is really worth hiring is to ask for references. Once you compile a list of references, you need to grill the hell out of the poor souls you call up looking for information.