Follow-up: Brief Review of CallCentric VoIP (SIP) Service
This is a follow-up to this post.
CallCentric has been working great for outbound SIP trunking and customer support continues to be very responsive.
Unfortunately, CallCentric does not support oversubscribing direct-inward-dial (DID) numbers to single trunks / channels. This is a total bummer as it is often the case that a business has low simultaneous usage of lines, but many employees that need to be called directly.
Let me explain… I worked with Bandwidth.com in the past and they *do* support oversubscription of DIDs, meaning that multiple direct-inward-dial numbers can be associated with a single trunk. For instance, at my last place of employment, I set up a three channel (Bandwidth.com calls them trunks) contract with 10 DIDs or incoming phone numbers. Any of those 10 DIDs could be called and they would be routed over any of the available 3 channels; if no channel was available, the caller would receive an “all circuits busy” message. This was a great setup for us as we did not usually have many simultaneous calls going on, yet we could still give our customers a direct line to each employee.
In light of this information from CallCentric, I am searching for a SIP/IAX trunking provider that does support over subscription of DIDs to channels at a decent rate. Bandwidth.com offered us great service when I used them last and I would like to use them again, but the per-month fees are a little high for my situation now. In my current situation, we have very little incoming activity to justify what most providers want to charge (~$20 per employee/trunk or single channel + DID combo) , so I will keep shopping. If you in the peanut gallery have any ideas, let me know.
Filed under: Asterisk / Trixbox / Telephony, Business, Linux, Technology
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Okay; so if I’m following you correctly, a single DID could have multiple inbound calls, but you can’t have multiple DIDs for a single SIP connection?
Doug,
Let me address your question for both CallCentric and Bandwidth.com, as they operate differently and I am not sure of which you inquire:
-Bandwidth.com - Yes, a single DID could have multiple inbound calls (call waiting) and each call would take up one channel; so the original call and the call waiting call would use two channels simultaneously. Yes, Bandwidth.com allows you to have more than one DID for a single SIP connection; in the case that you have multiple SIP connections (channels) and multiple DIDs, the DIDs are not necessarily tied to any one particular channel, but will go to any open channel to relay an incoming call.
-CallCentric allows multiple incoming calls (call waiting) on a single DID, on a single channel / SIP connection. And you are also correct that CallCentric does not allow multiple DIDs for a single SIP connection; you must purchase and register another SIP connection for each additional DID you wish to have which really defeats a lot of the purpose in VoIP and ruins the cost savings for incoming calls.
On the cost savings arguments — With AT&T CallVantage (my current home provider) for instance, I used to have multiple DIDs in different area codes so that my clients in different states could reach me without long distance charges. The nominal $5.00 monthly fee was worth it in my situation and I only had to have one SIP channel.
Sorry for the confusion and I hope that clears things up.
-Dennis
I’m don’t think your explanation is correct. Callcentric does allow multiple numbers (DID’s) on 1 account; you just can’t share channels between each DID; meaning you can’t have 1 “trunk” of channels that are shared amongst many DID’s.
So as an example - if you buy a number in Los Angeles it comes with X number of channels (calls) depending on which product of theirs you buy; and you can ALSO buy another number in Miami that comes with Y number of channels. So you have 2 different numbers - they will both ring through to Asterisk or whatever you are using on your side; but channels on LA and Miami numbers (X and Y) are independant from eachother and not shared.
While this isn’t as flexible as having a “trunK” of shared channels you can accomplish having multiple numbers. Since their pricing is pretty reasonable (I consider it cheap) the fact that you can’t have a trunk isn’t really a consequence (at least to me).
The example I gave about LA and Miami using Asterisk is exacly what I have setup on my 1 Callcentric account.
Hi Ben,
If I implied that having multiple numbers on one account is impossible, that is indeed incorrect. Thank you for the clarification.
Unfortunately, with the 1:1 nature of channels to numbers, the pricing becomes prohibitive for my situation, even though the unit price is not that high. CallCentric would be much more competitive if they offered a 1:n possibility.
-Dennis