HostRocket's VoIP division offers wholesale VoIP—as well as a private label solution that charges a $200 setup fee.

by Jeff Goldman [October 24, 2007]

The webhosting company HostRocket was founded in 1999, and the division ViaTalk was created in 2005 to add voice over IP to the company's suite of services. Looking back, company VoIP engineer Iain McQueen says it was a logical next step for HostRocket to take as the hosting industry became more and more saturated.

VT White, the company's VoIP offering, is available both as a wholesale solution and as a turnkey, private label product. A key strength of both offerings, McQueen says, is the fact that you can get involved in VoIP with minimal startup costs.

Private label VoIP
And that's particularly true of the private label offering. "It's a way to get something set up, from the ground up, for $200," McQueen says. "We take a $200 setup fee for getting into the program—and if you want a new domain name, we'll purchase that for you; we get you an SSL certificate, so your signups are secure; and we provide you with a website."

VT White 21 Corporate Drive Clifton Park, NY 12065 Tel: (866) 492-9774 Web contact form

The back end control panel, front end, and customer self-service portal are all graphical interfaces based on Ruby on Rails and AJAX. The entire system, McQueen says, is designed to be as intuitive and user-friendly as possible, from tracking customer usage to changing colors and text on the front end.

The idea, McQueen says, is to handle literally everything for the client except the marketing. "We take care of all the back end things," he says. "Our network is already set up and stable; we ship them the equipment, so you don't have to provide them with that; we provide tech support that's private labeled to your company—all that comes in the box with the $200, and it never costs you any money after that."

Hands-off billing
ViaTalk bills the customer directly using the ISP's branding, and then pays the ISP the difference between the wholesale price and the ISP's chosen retail price. "You can mark it up as much as you want, depending on what your market is—some people are willing to pay more than others—and we just write you a check every month for that amount," McQueen says.

The customer is charged an activation fee for their ATA, but the ATA itself is owned by ViaTalk. "We mail it to them, and we service it," McQueen says. "If it breaks, we'll replace it—they just have to send the old one back. It's all branded. It comes in a custom box with your logo on it, the shipping label has your name on it—and you never have to handle any of it."

The company's background as a webhosting provider, McQueen says, helped it to prepare this kind of total solution. "There are some things that are different, too, and we've done a good job of overcoming those obstacles—you're handing out equipment, so there's a physical aspect that's not there with hosting," he says. "We've taken care of all those issues, and that's why we like the reseller program: it allows you to not have to go through those growing pains that we've already gone through."

Wholesale services
The wholesale solution, covering VoIP origination and termination, is obviously much more straightforward than the private label product—and McQueen says it's difficult to differentiate the wholesale offering with anything other than price. "Since we have so much traffic going through us, we are able to be competitive in that market," he says.

All fees for the wholesale service are prepaid. There's an initial $5 charge to start, then all subsequent fees are paid in advance. "You have an account balance, and you can put money in whenever you want—and we never actually charge your credit card," McQueen says. "So you control how you get charged."

Finally, McQueen says the fact that the company is privately owned and debt free helps to set it apart from other providers in the industry. "With things like the SunRocket disaster, you can see that there are problems with not having the capital to keep it moving forward," he says. "We don't have that problem—so that's one thing that separates us from the rest."

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