Hello,

My name is Najla. I am new to this or any other kind of business. My brother used to be huge (close to a million dollars, not minutes, every month) in phone cards quite a few years back but he is now involved with other businesses. Recently an old contact of his made a very serious query about purchasing a couple of million pins terminating to Mexico (mostly off-net) every month (five minutes per pin given as promotions to their customers). The deal seems to be a cinch. It has also motivated him to get back into his phone cards (also targeting Mexico).

Only problem is that my brother is staying pretty hands off. So I am left to wade through this stuff on my own.

My dilemma and queries are listed below. Any and all help/suggestions/referrals will be greatly appreciated:

1.I can’t get a firm number as to what the direct/actual/marginal/variable cost a VOIP carrier incurs to terminate a call to off-net Mexico.  My brother seems to think it is ZERO because he says they all use their own call centers in Mexico, route the calls originating from the US to their own call center in Mexico from where they transport the call as a local call or a data transmission and route it to the destination number thereby circumventing any termination costs to the local telco. He says even the big carriers do this or they sub their terminations to a VOIP carrier who does it for them.

On the other hand the sales reps at the couple of carriers I have spoken to seem to indicate that they have to pay termination costs to the local telco.

Can anyone shed some light on this and tell what the real story is and what would be a good rate per minute to off net Mexico, factoring in the massive volumes that we are talking about?

2.Can anyone suggest how and where to look for an experienced /knowledgeable telecom/VOIP consultant?

3.Any other general suggestions and guidelines?

Thanking you in anticipation,

Najla
Ps. Email to this address is welcome: mudarissa@yahoo.com