[VoiceOps] Creating an International Rate Deck

Tue Jun 4 15:26:54 EDT 2019

I know of carriers that don't even bill clients for calls because of the
hassle. How many minutes are you doing a month and what is your setup? You
may want to hand it off to a third party and bill based in the ANI.

On Tue, Jun 4, 2019 at 2:29 PM Shripal Daphtary <shripald at gmail.com> wrote:

> this is all so annoying b/c we do so little international,
>
> On Tue, Jun 4, 2019 at 1:57 PM Jared Geiger <jared at compuwizz.net> wrote:
>
>> 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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