[VoiceOps] Creating an International Rate Deck

Tue Jun 4 13:57:10 EDT 2019

Another annoyance to watch out for is all codes from various carriers won't
match up. For example UK Landlines. Some carriers will say country code 44
is landlines and give you a rate, then break out 447XXX for the mobiles.
Others will give a rate for 441 and 442. Then some will give a rate for
442, 4420, 44203, 44207 or some combination of those which they should all
end up being compressed to 442. So your LCR has to do the longest prefix
match per carrier and then compare against carriers. Not necessarily
shortest prefix match. For example:

Number dialed: 44-20-7499-9000
Carrier A: 44 - 0.0025
Carrier B: 442 - 0.0045
Carrier C: 44207 - 0.0085

The obvious LCR is carrier A, but the last time I tested A2Billing, it
would say Carrier C is the winner because the rest of the carriers don't
have a rate for 44207. The other LCR option at the time would do shortest
prefix match which could cause issues with mobile calls being incorrectly
routed and rated. Things may have changed as my experience with A2Billing
was many years ago, but it should apply to LCR calculations in general.

On Tue, Jun 4, 2019 at 10:24 AM Shripal Daphtary <shripald at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks Paul and Dovid --
>
> I guess the question is what if i get a completion for the most expensive
> carrier as opposed to the cheapest, and it turns out i'm underwater?  The
> issue is the variance btw carrier1 (cheapest) and carrier6 (most expensive)
> could be 40 cents at times or more.
>
> I'll take a look at GCS and R&R as well
>
> We have an implementation of a2 billing to route international, but use it
> mostly to limit fraud exposure.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 4, 2019 at 11:36 AM Paul Stamoulis <pstamoulis at onestoptel.net>
> wrote:
>
>> Int’l rating and routing is not for the feint of heart or the hurried –
>> 215k of unique rating/routing options or “breakouts” as known in the
>> industry, is not too bad.
>>
>>
>>
>> You can use MS excel if you have the time to continually update and are
>> familiar with excel macros but remember that rate updates come at least
>> 5once or twice a week with most vendors so times that by the number of
>> vendors and be ready to update-update-update or else you can lose money.
>>
>>
>>
>> You may be better off either purchasing specialized SW or using one of
>> the many cloud based companies to manage your rates for you; GCS is one
>> such company in the USA and R&R is another – I have no relations with
>> either company but I hear that they are both decent.
>>
>>
>>
>> You should try to use all 6 carriers because, you are going to find that
>> when one of the cheaper vendors does NOT work to one of the breakouts, then
>> usually the other cheap vendors do NOT either. That’s when you need to be 6
>> or more routes deep or risk upsetting clients.
>>
>>
>>
>> As far as the mark-up on rates, don’t sweat that too much round up and
>> have a larger markup for the cheaper rates. For retial certainly , you
>> should have more than enough room and for wholesale int’l sales, well
>> that’s a whole other subject that gets much more complex… good luck,
>>
>>
>>
>> *Paul Stamoulis    +1 212 444 3003     Onestopcorp – thousands of
>> technology solutions... just one call!*
>>
>>
>>
>> *Please connect at https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-stamoulis-56504531/
>> <https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-stamoulis-56504531/>*
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* VoiceOps <voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org> *On Behalf Of *Shripal
>> Daphtary
>> *Sent:* Tuesday, June 4, 2019 10:10 AM
>> *To:* VoiceOps at voiceops.org
>> *Subject:* [VoiceOps] Creating an International Rate Deck
>>
>>
>>
>> Hey group,
>>
>>
>>
>> I have a question that I have been struggling with for years and have
>> never come up with a good solution for.  It revolves around International
>> Rate Deck creation, but i guess it could be for any tariff.   We have
>> multiple carriers for International, however, i'm trying out Thinq right
>> now so we can use their LCR.  Our other carriers aren't very successful
>> with Intl.  Thinq's rate deck to me is 6 carriers for each prefix, making
>> it around 215,000 lines. The carrier(s) that have the lowest cost for each
>> prefix varies, so i can't turn off the most expensive three or something
>> like that.
>>
>>
>>
>> I was thinking of taking the least expensive 3 carriers and then
>> averaging them and creating my rate from that average and then only allow
>> Thinq to go 3 carriers deep. Does anyone have any experience with this?
>>  Are there any best practices?
>>
>>
>>
>> The second part of the question is how does one calculate the profit
>> margin?  Let's say you wanted to make 35% for retail and 20% for wholesale,
>> but if you call UK landline, the cost is only 0.004.  Your rate  would be
>> 0.0054 for retail and 0.0048, which is nothing.  We have been doing
>> something like If your cost is less than 0.03, then increase by 35% or 20%
>> or whatever.  however, that doesn't always work if the cost is super close
>> to your target.
>>
>>
>>
>> Does anyone have any hard and fast rules that they use when creating
>> decks? is there software that can help my puny brain think through this?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks !
>>
>>
>>
>> Shri
>>
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