InPhonex's VoIP reseller program is designed to give ISPs a great deal of flexibility in building a voice offering for their customers—but don't expect anything as simple as a pre-configured website.

by Jeff Goldman [May 7, 2008]

Miami, Fla.-based VoIP provider InPhonex was founded in late 2003, and the company launched its reseller offering, VarPhonex, the following year. "We had identified a need to enable the service providers, individuals and businesses that were looking to get involved in IP telephony, so we started to build them the tools," explains company chief marketing officer Todd Hirshorn.

Because the founders came from the webhosting business, Hirshorn says, they had a good understanding of what resellers require in order to offer a strong product to their end users. "We know the customer, we know the reseller, and we know how to give them the ability to market their services and not have to worry about any of the heavy lifting," he says.

VarPhonex 7204 NW 31st St Miami, FL 33122 Tel: (800) 346-9047 Web contact form

As a result, Hirshorn says, VarPhonex's entire offering is hosted by InPhonex on the reseller's behalf. "We had to build it so a smaller company, someone smaller than an ISP—without a data center, without any kind of core competency—could get this thing up, not only without the investment and without the hardware, but fast," he says.

A wide range of resellers
Still, while VarPhonex is designed to meet the needs of the smallest resellers, the company also offers SIP trunking and SIP termination for larger providers. "We have a very functional API that uses web services and SOAP to support large enterprise resellers or partners… as much as we can do for the little guy, we can do that much more for the larger ones," Hirshorn says.

That kind of solution, Hirshorn says, is particularly appropriate for ISPs. "If you have an ISP that's looking to get into the VoIP business and doesn't want to build their own infrastructure… they can get all the billing information they need, they can provision orders through the API system, and pretty much roll the way they would normally if they built the infrastructure on their own," he says.

At the other end of the spectrum, InPhonex also has an affiliate program for those resellers that don't want to have any ongoing responsibility for the customer relationship. Affiliate agreements are negotiated on a case-by-case basis, Hirshorn says, and can involve either a one-time payment or recurring royalties. "It's a good entry point for somebody who's on the fence," he says.

In-depth control
All reseller services are controlled through the company's Reseller Administration Panel, or RAP. "The reseller uses RAP to manage their accounts, provision orders, get their CDRs for billing—everything they would need from a portal environment where they can log in and place real-time orders that provision in 60 seconds," Hirshorn says.

Access to RAP, Hirshorn says, can be controlled on an individual basis for each employee. "Larger resellers—and even the smaller ones—like the fact that they can set permissions for their users so that when their internal staff log into the reseller admin panel, they might not see the same things that their colleague sees," he says.

Hirshorn says RAP also gives the reseller access to in-depth control of branding, down to the SIP proxy as well as the domain from which WAV files of incoming voice-mails are e-mailed to an end user. On the other hand, he says, VarPhonex does not offer basic tools like a pre-branded web page to its resellers—each reseller does their own integration into their website as needed. "We didn't think that a templated solution was going to be in anybody's best interests," he says. "If anything, it could cause competitive problems."

Fees and calling rates
Fees for resellers, Hirshorn says, are very straightforward: the reseller pays a $200 startup fee and receives $100 in credit in return—"so your net cost is really $100 to get started," he says. Resellers can then structure plans for their end users any way they like, from pay-as-you-go plans to unlimited offerings. "This allows a reseller to tailor the service perfectly to any type of user," he says.

That tailoring, Hirshorn says, can be as detailed as the reseller wants it to be. "They can create their own calling plan from scratch," he says. "They can go in and say, 'I want to create a Mexico unlimited plan that includes Paraguay cellular' … and that's a pretty incredible tool, because they can now compete in areas where no one else has a plan like that: if they want to make a Pakistan-Iran plan, they can."

Essentially, each route can be priced however the reseller chooses. "Our variable rating tool allows them to fully customize their rates—there are 2,000 routes, and they can go in and customize every one of those routes to increase profit by percentage or by price per minutes," Hirshorn says.

Those rates can then be displayed on the reseller's website with real time updates. "If we add a DID in Corachiva, Brazil tomorrow, it's going to show up on their already-configured availability page, for example, in real time" Hirshorn says. "They don't have to do anything—once they build it, it's talking to our system, and our system is always going to keep their site up to date."

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