XO’s new pricing plans for integrated data+voice “eliminate pricing based on the number of voice lines.” The first thing that came to my mind was how the number of voice lines can be irrelevant when XO is paying incrementally for each of those lines it sources from its vendor. So let me build up the momentum a bit more. If I am an enterprise customer and I have 3-liner-8-extension hosted PBX arrangement with XO, I will either pay for the 8 extensions or I will pay for 3 lines (or maximum pre-set simultaneous calls limit for an enterprise). Now if I make 10 simultaneous calls, that means I am engaging 10 lines on XO platform. Surely I can’t get 10 lines for the price of 3 I previously subscribed to. So what is the catch?
XO did not make it clear through the announcement that this new pricing plan relates to XO’s trunking/integrated-access service, not the hosted PBX service (XO does not provide hosted PBX offering anyway). Since XO has control over compression codecs it employs, only a certain number of trunks or lines are physically possible on any one of the data pipes offered in XO IP Flex or XO SIP, so their license exposure is a known quantity when setting prices. It would have been a “new, groundbreaking pricing concept” if there was a flat rate regardless of the number of extensions behind the pipe or regardless of the number of simultaneous calls allowed (with the enterprise left free to use whatever compression). I guess we are not ready for that kind of licensing model yet when it comes to a traditional telecom application server.