5.8 million SMS entries routed by the peering exchange VPF
Carrier arbitrage and clearinghouse business is notorious for ultra low margins, especially since long distance calling rates have declined at a tremendous rate. Those who have offered peering/clearinghouse services for VoIP traffic have often talked about value added services. But Stealth’s recent announcement is first such offering I came across in the industry.
New York based Stealth, which operates VoIP peering exchange (VPF), does not even bother to charge its members per minute. It charges a flat fee for a certain MB or GB capacity. With the recent addition of non-voice value added services like SMS and MMS, the company could apply usage based billing. But it has remained faithful to its original flat rate model.
The service was launched sometime in June this year. So far the exchange has routed 5.8 million SMS/MMS entries for its member carriers.
Voice over WiFi users of VPF’s member providers can use their wireless devices for SMS / MMS. But ultimately mobile carriers will be able to benefit from such service since the underlying peering technology is based on ENUM servers which is a discovery or storage mechanism for telephone numbers. VPF type databases can be used at a much lower cost than what mobile carriers use today. Margins can also improve for mobile carriers.
