In its March/April, 2007, company newsletter, Epygi (News - Alert)—a company devoted to making selecting VoIP solutions easier—highlighted the success story of reseller VoIP Unlimited, in the “Partner Spotlight” section.

 

VoIP Unlimited, a wholesale VoIP company that offers solutions for IT and telephony dealers serving the business market, entered the marketplace just over fourteen months ago but has already made its mark (and a profit) in IP voice provisioning.

 

Through a value-added reseller (VAR) channel originally devoted to data-only networks, VoIP unlimited makes selecting VoIP solutions easier, too, by supplying wholesale SIP trunking.

 

In the Epygi newsletter article, VoIP Unlimited sales director Steve Bieniek explained why his company’s business model is unique.

 

“We’ve made it easy and profitable for VARs to move into voice applications,” he said. “We broker bulk services from a variety of major suppliers to ensure reliable reserves and competitive rates. Then we provide the expertise, take responsibility for service quality, and even manage the billing cycle and invoice users directly.”

For VARs, VoIP Unlimited’s offerings are especially valuable because they don’t stop at mere provisioning; the company also offers its resellers pre-sale planning and consulting, network installation support and troubleshooting, and post-sale technical support. These services are provided under a nondisclosure agreement.

 

When VoIP Unlimited’s founders set about launching the company, they look a hard look at the explicit barriers to broad acceptance of nascent VoIP technology. One of these barriers was the fact that, when problems popped up, there was a tendency for finger-pointing and blame to be employed up and down the value chain—from ISP to hardware integrator to software developers, and back.

 

What VoIP Unlimited’s founders wondered was, if no-one on that value chain was willing to take responsibility, would the buck ever stop, as it were? And if not, what effect would that have on the willingness of service users to invest in systems that was likely to let them down in some way before long?

 

“We take blame out of the equation,” Bieniek said in the Epygi article. “We’ve marshaled the resources to take the responsibility for locating the source of any problem and taking steps to rectify it.”

 

The “buck stops here” approach taken by VoIP Unlimited takes the risk out of VoIP for VARs. Because the company provides needed technical support, its resellers can dive into VoIP without fearing that, by doing so, they might hurt their business relationships.

 

Bieniek pointed out that, unlike most ISPs, VoIP Unlimited sells only minutes. The company doesn’t get involved with IP Centex or applications that compete with VARs or the offerings of its hardware manufacturer partners.

 

But VoIP Unlimited doesn’t stop with IP provisioning. The company also has addressed the fact that traditional data VARs tended to work on a project basis, and as a result don’t have the infrastructure needed to deal with invoicing subscription-based VoIP services on a monthly basis. So, VoIP Unlimited additionally offers managed billing services to simplify cost-reduce this process for resellers.

 

“Invoicing systems are enormously expensive and complex,” Bieniek said in the article.  “We made the investment and now provide the service to resellers free of charge.”

The company used an electronic debit system certified by the British Approvals Board of Telecommunications to create invoices for users who incur metered service charges. This system can be custom-branded for resellers.

 

Using this service from VoIP Unlimited, a reseller can bill three to four thousand minutes per week, while maintaining a fixed margin. The company collects monies owed and immediately pays each dealer, meaning there is no operational costs for the reseller.

“It’s a very open relationship,” Bieniek said. “They know what they’re earning and what we're earning. As volume grows, we expect to increase resellers’ shares.”

Recently, VoIP Unlimited’s SIP trunking became officially accredited by Egypi for use with Epygi’s Quadro IP PBX. This certification represents a mutually beneficial relationship between the two companies. Bieniek said that Epygi’s IP PBX (News - Alert) is perfectly positioned for the VARs and small business customers that VoIP Unlimited serves.

“They build robust, full-featured hardware and we've received excellent assistance from Epygi’s engineering team in Armenia,” he said of Epygi and its products.

To learn more about Epygi and its products, please visit the company’s TMCnet.com channel, Selecting VoIP Solutions.

 

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