I guess that in some retrospective. the traditional calling card business is dead - however, new services such as PokeTalk.Com, 012Global and others introduce a new spin to this highly traditional market.
The introduction of Dual and Tripe IMSI SIM cards had spun a totally new breed of calling card, a SIM bound one - one that no longer requires the printing of cards, but is now bound to an electronic element.
In some form, I guess the business will never really die - it will simply morph into a new one.
My company caters to 6 different calling card operators, each one doing its own thing. We've developed a highly versatile and robust calling-card/prepaid/postpaid/IVR development framework, which our customers utilize to build these systems using Asterisk. Some of these are racking up to 800 concurrent calls at any given time of the day - which means, around 35 million minutes a month catered using Asterisk.
Nir S
The introduction of Dual and Tripe IMSI SIM cards had spun a totally new breed of calling card, a SIM bound one - one that no longer requires the printing of cards, but is now bound to an electronic element.
In some form, I guess the business will never really die - it will simply morph into a new one.
My company caters to 6 different calling card operators, each one doing its own thing. We've developed a highly versatile and robust calling-card/prepaid/postpaid/IVR development framework, which our customers utilize to build these systems using Asterisk. Some of these are racking up to 800 concurrent calls at any given time of the day - which means, around 35 million minutes a month catered using Asterisk.
Nir S
On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 10:17 PM, Dan Miller <dan.miller@gmail.com> wrote:
I haven't sized the market lately and was primarily North American focused when I did.
It appears that there are lively country pairs for calls originating from urban areas in the U.S. (to Latin America, South America, Carribean, Middle East)
Can't speak to call volumes because we haven't systematically gathered info lately.
There will always be a baseline of voice traffic over public networks, but it does seem like Skype, Trufone.... other softphone based approaches would choke off more expensive alternatives once people get low price (of shared), connected PCs.
DanOn Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 7:23 AM, Alex Balashov <abalashov@evaristesys.com> wrote:
IP is compelling for access, but the carrier world is still firmly TDM.
That, and IP just isn't as reliable at this point.
When someone offers a cheap TDM switch, I get intrigued.
Alex Balashov - Principal
David Knell wrote:
> It's not dead; it's merely changed.
>
> Last time I bought a TDM switch, I paid about US$150,000 for 64E1s - so
> it'd switch about 1000 calls. Several years later, we run that traffic
> volume and more through two commodity Dell servers which, with
> bandwidth, cost us about $250/month. And it takes a few hours to hook
> up to a new carrier, rather than weeks or months in the TDM world. So
> it's no wonder that there's a lot of TDM equipment coming onto the
> market; IP is too compelling.
>
> There is also a lot of activity around cellphones - for example, a
> couple of the UK calling card companies have launched MVNOs with an
> emphasis on cheap international calling (such as Lycatel with
> Lycamobile), selling SIMs through their existing distribution, and
> existing carriers are starting to offer cheap international calling
> packages, both to postpaid and prepaid customers.
>
> Question back at you - what do you say when someone asks if you can sell
> their TDM switch?
>
> --Dave
>
>> is it dead? i have many people e-mailing me asking if I can sell their
>> switches (NACT, DTI, Excel) I also know from last year the intelecard
>> show was a bust...so what do you guys think? are we all just heading
>> to mobile phones and unified communications? what about the people
>> that have credit issues? prepaid cell phones?
>>
>> --
>> Thank you,
>>
>> -Wes-
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