In the great world of VoIP you have to classes of service providers. On one side you have telecom and carriers working at a wholesale level, handling bulk traffic. On the other side you have VoIP service providers who handle the retail side, serving individuals, small and medium enterprise with a variety of VoIP related services including call termination. The retail end of VoIP is proving to be particularly profitable in the wake of Covid-19 and recession proof, a reason to consider starting your own retail VoIP service with a top class 5 softswitch at the core of your infrastructure.
Bright prospects for VoIP services
The travel and tourism industry is virtually beached. Manufacturing is going slow in the face of uncertainties. If there is one bright, shining star, it is VoIP communications with the retail segment an attractive option.
The VoIP market will exceed $ 55 billion by 2025 according to Global Market Insights study. The Covid-19 impact has led to over 8% increase in demand as work from home and need for VoIP based communication grew by leaps and bounds. Compare this to the previous not-so-bright predictions dating back to 2018-19 when IBISWorld expected revenues to decline at 1.9%. Start a profitable VoIP service venture with softswitch software at the core.
Lots of possibilities
Unlike carriers that rely on class 4 softswitch for bulk traffic handling, your class 5 softswitch retail VoIP business offers a lot of possibilities.
- Serve business users through computer to computer VoIP services including IVR, IP PBX, WebRTC, SMS, FoIP and similar.
- Serve domestic VoIP segment (which, incidentally, has a greater than 12% growth rate) with PIN and PINless calling cards as well as prepaid and postpaid voice, broadband and video services
- Service businesses and individuals with mobile VoIP (growth of over 13%). This is profitable considering businesses now permit employees to bring their own devices and become part of company’s VoIP service network.
- Engage resellers and retailers for downstream sales with white label class 5 softswitch that includes billing, accounting and reporting linked with call detail records.
The world runs on VoIP. You can grab a slice of the 55 billion dollar pie by starting a profitable VoIP service based on class 5 softswitch and a minimum of other requisites.
Future expandability
It is difficult to expand horizontally or vertically in other business segments. If you are in the hotel business then you would have to invest sizeable amounts to open hotels in various cities and countries. For manufacturing the issue is the same. However, for VoIP service providers there are more choices. You can stay local if you like and be content with steadily increasing stream of revenues. You can expand your presence to other cities or other countries with modest investments in ramping up infrastructure at modest costs. This is vertical growth.
You could grow horizontally by adding value added services such as IP PBX, as stated above. One customer who avails of different services can add more to your revenues.
So, how do I start VoIP Service
It is easy to get started in the world of VoIP services with the addition of a few pieces of hardware to serve as gateways and servers and then you go for softswitch software, of which class 5 softswitch is a must have apart from the session border controller software for security. Nothing earthshaking about this. Your investment is modest. Your returns grow exponentially with increase in customer base. Just find one vendor for your infrastructure set up and guidance and, choosing someone who serves carriers with VoIP software solutions is a good idea. You would also have to enter into a tie up with carriers to port your voice traffic across exchanges. There is a lot more to it and a suitable vendor could provide you primary information to get you started. Once you do, then adding other software platforms such as IP PBX is easy since these are available as hosted, multi-tenant solutions to which you simply subscribe.
The right softswitch is important
You could get a plain vanilla softswitch solution but it helps to find a better one:
- One that can handle increasing loads of voice traffic as well as media traffic without hiccups
- One that is white label so you can brand it and sell services as your own, besides letting resellers develop their own brand
- One that includes complete monitoring, tracking and analysis
- One that has integrated payment and billing solution
There are established VoIP service providers using legacy hardware based class 5 switch and, in the face of increasing traffic and usage, they are likely to face problems. Upgrading to software softswitch brings about a sea change in performance. It is worth switching over to software solutions by way of softswitches to enhance quality of services.
Now is perhaps a very good time to enter the retail VoIP service business with a class 5 softswitch and never look back.