Virtual web hosting companies have been a feature of the Internet landscape for quite a while. The model is a pretty simple one – company A sets up a big web hoster, and then for a few hundred dollars a year, sells the right to rebrand that web hoster to hordes of web hosting wannabes. The resellers do the heavy lifting on the marketing, and the hoster reaps the benefits of multitudes of customers, albeit at wholesale rates.
The Flat Planet Phone Company (disclosure: an iotum partner) is going to do exactly the same, but for VoIP.  Chief Flattening Officer (lovely title) Moshe Maeir has recently thrown the doors open on his beta, inviting anyone who wants to become a VoIP service provider to use his switch and infrastructure for free. That’s right, for a limited period of time, while they’re testing, you can be a VoIP service provider, gratis.
Moshe’s pitch is pretty seductive. For $199/year (when they’re out of test), and less than an hour of your time, you can become a VoIP service provider. For that, you get:
Hmmm… you go out there and sell to your hearts content. They handle all the back office. Sounds like a sweet deal to me.  Moshe should do well.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
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Alec:
I have been looking for the right "whit label" ITSP provider for some time but haven't found one yet.
Flat Planet looks right but not much information about rate plans is avaible on their website. Also, when I went to their website to sign-up, I got an error.
The trouble with most "white label" ITSP providers is that they "lock you in" to their own per-minute termination rates which are 100% to 200% higher than what is available in the open market. Also, their unlimited rate plans are higher than what is available on the open market. With this situation, you just can't make money when companies like AxVoice are offering US and Canda unlimited plans for $19/month.
In general, lower the up-front cost, higher the rates. I like one ITSP white label provider's rate plan but their set up fee is $5000 and they require committing to "high" subscriptions per month.
I'll like to hear other's views as well as a response from Flat Planet.
Thanks.
Kanti Hi,
You are right in general – but I think you will be surprised in our case. Right now we are letting you try the services for free and you will only pay 1 cent a minute over the first 1000 minutes.
In the future you will find that we will enable you to offer sophisticated voice services for costs less than a basic dial tone service like Vonage etc. Our intentions are to help the little guys communicate like the big guys!
Stay tuned!
Moshe,
Thanks. I am getting familiar with your beta – and I am impressed with the broad range of functionality and features. No actual accounts and test calls made yet – I just started this afternoon.
With respect to the rates, do you plan to allow third party termination services?
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