Why VoIP Minutes Are a Priority For Customers and Resellers

Most avenues of communication have undergone substantial changes over the past decades. Some, like the internet, are only a few decades old but have transformed the way people and businesses communicate.

How VoIP has changed telecoms

A huge proportion of communication still takes place over the comparatively venerable telephone network, which fundamentally hasn’t undergone any substantial changes in quite some time. At least, until very recently.

More recently, telecommunications firms have taken to marrying the widely used telephone technology with the far more modern internet infrastructure, giving rise to VoIP. This has created a whole new market, creating VoIP minutes resellers. But what exactly are these resellers doing, and how does this help offer benefits to VoIP customers?

How VoIP reselling works

How Does VoIP Reselling Work?

VoIP minutes resellers do exactly what the name describes: they buy VoIP minutes wholesale from providers like idtexpress, repackage them, and sell them to customers.

To understand this, you need to know that there are multiple tiers of VoIP provider: Tier 1 providers own and manage the infrastructure, renting time or bandwidth on it. Tier 2 providers run networks on this rented infrastructure. Tier 3 providers include minutes resellers and many retailers.

Why reselling benefits customers

How Is VoIP Reselling Beneficial for Customers and Resellers?

This multi-tiered provider structure actually offers substantial benefits to customers and by extension resellers – at least if basic free market principles are to be believed.

Tier 1 and 2 providers look to sell huge blocks of minutes at a time – far more than any individual or private company would want to buy up front. This is what creates the market niche for resellers. A reseller can look to buy a huge number of minutes, taking advantage of lower bulk-purchase rates which give them room to make a profit.

The resellers can then repackage these minutes into much more manageable chunks at a mark-up, giving them a tidy profit but also passing these minutes on to customers at rates much closer to the wholesale, with more room to compete with other resellers on price.

With multiple ‘steps’ between the ultimate provider and the end user, you would almost expect prices to increase – everyone along the chain wants to make some money. However, resellers can take advantage of bulk discounts to not only make some money but to offer better, and cheaper, services to clients.

Summary

This article explains how VoIP has changed telecoms by letting resellers buy minutes wholesale from tier 1 and 2 providers and repackage them for customers at competitive rates. It sets out the multi-tiered structure of VoIP providers, and argues that bulk discounts let resellers make a profit while still offering customers cheaper rates than they could get buying minutes directly.

Questions this article raises

• How much cheaper are VoIP minutes typically than traditional phone calls?
• What happens if a VoIP reseller goes out of business?
• How do you check whether a VoIP minutes reseller is reputable?