Junction Networks prides itself on flexibility, with regard to everything from hardware options to customer contracts.

by Jeff Goldman [March 12, 2008]

Junction Networks was founded in 2004 as a PSTN gateway provider, working with customers who had their own VoIP PBXes and simply needed PSTN connectivity. About a year ago, the company expanded its product suite with the addition of a hosted PBX offering.

ISPs can offer a fully branded version of that solution, called onSIP, to their customers through Junction Networks' reseller program.

Junction Networks 2865 S Eagle Rd #307 Newtown, PA 18940 Tel: (800) 801-3381 Web contact form

According to company CEO Mike Oeth, onSIP's simplicity for end users is a key selling point. "The only thing that they need is a VoIP phone—it can be a hard phone or a softphone—and a broadband connection, and that's it," he says.

Junction's flexibility with regard to phones, Oeth says, also makes it particularly user-friendly. "We don't sell any hardware… so as long as it's either Asterisk or it's 100 percent SIP-compatible, you can use it with our system," he says. "And the equipment is your equipment. If there's anything you don't like about us or our service, you can take your equipment and go someplace else."

Oeth also sees the fact that the company targets business users, not residential customers, as a key strength. "On Vonage, if you want to have ten simultaneous calls, great: sign up for ten different accounts," Oeth says. "That's kind of a pain. With us, by default, you can have an unlimited number of outbound simultaneous calls, and each phone number can handle 25 simultaneous inbound calls. So everything is really catered to the business market."

Responsiveness and pricing
The fact that Junction Networks wrote all its own software for onSIP, Oeth says, greatly improves the company's flexibility. "If the customer wants something specific, we can usually do it pretty quickly," he says. "If there's any bugs in the system, we get those corrected right away, as opposed to having to go back to the manufacturer and hope that the bug gets fixed in the next rev of their software."

Of course, that also means that Junction isn't paying anyone a license fee—and as a result, Oeth says, there's no per-seat license fee for onSIP. "They can have as many extensions as they want for free, they can have as many users as they want for free, and each user can be logged in from up to ten different locations," he says.

Instead, the pricing is structured more like software as a service, with the addition of a per-minute fee for PSTN calls. "Any calls that you make that are internet-based—any SIP calls, any extension-to-extension calls—those are all free," Oeth says. "For anything that still has to deal with the PSTN, you still have to pay per minute."

And then you simply pay for the software you use, either in a bundled package or a la carte. "If you want some auto-attendants, you pay for auto-attendants," Oeth says. "You want hunt groups, you pay for hunt groups. You want voice-mail boxes, then you pay for the voice-mail boxes. But you only pay for what you use."

The reseller program
Resellers, Oeth says, pay Junction Networks as described above, and can then charge their customers however they like. If they want to add a per-person fee, they can of course do so. And because Junction is open to working with any SIP-compatible hardware, resellers can sell their customers whatever phones they like. "We're very, very flexible in the ways that resellers can come in and make a nice margin with the product," Oeth says.

To offer the service itself, resellers can use either a white label website provided by Junction Networks or the company's open API. "There's nothing that we do on our website that is not available through our API—and it's completely open to anyone: resellers, or anyone else who's trying to add either phone numbers or SIP calling capabilities to their service," Oeth says.

Additional offerings include VoIP over Wi-Fi and click-to-call functionality—the latter of which, Oeth says, has proved particularly attractive for webhosting resellers. "They just throw that in as part of the service," he says.

But it's the company's flexibility in all aspects of its relationship with its customers, Oeth says, that has proved to be its strongest selling point. "In that same way, we don't have contracts with our customers, and we don't have minimum monthly commitments," he says. "That's kind of our SLA with a customer, that you have nothing holding you here except our great customer service. That keeps us on top of our game every single day."

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