Landline costs for diverting calls to mobile and usage

A_mgg

Hi
I have found a business that offers the purchase of a landline number to then divert to a chosen mobile with additional services like out of business hours responses, multi number divert and so on: Airlandline (I can't post links yet)

I have signed up to their service but before my plan begins I am interested to know how they offer £9.99/month for all costs - maintenance, service, usage. I am interested in the usage part. They assure that all costs are static, but how would they really be confident with their pricing if my usage was very high in a particular month. As a small looking company (and i don't know much about the telecoms world), are they taking a slight risk essentially being charged say 1p/minute usage from their source provider of the local area code phone numbers, and expecting the usage to not be too high that it goes over the £9.99 a month? Are they expecting that with their portfolio of clients, some will have low usage and some have higher, they are balancing out their costs between the two, i.e. using the low usage customer's savings to cover the cost of the high usage customers expenses? I can appreciate as a phone divert service, my personal mobile would rack up normal monthly expenses with my provider regardless, but as the middle men are Air landline taking that chance with their bills from their provider of the local numbers they buy to be used as the diversion?

I don't want to run into issues with them.

Looking forward to responses.
A

JJ_Egan

Who are They ??

Did you research them before signing up . How long are you tied in for .

A_mgg

@JJ_Egan - you can find them on google 'AirLandline'. Looks to be lots of good FB reviews on their site, but nothing on trustpilot. I signed up for their 1 week free trial Monday just gone and all good so far with quick turnaround and actual product. Not tied in, but I asked the question above in terms of usage and they haven't got back to me with a response, so I thought I'd take it here for weekend readers to jump in, especially before my trial ends Sunday. 

I'm interested to know how they could really have free call diverts, or if this is just a cover up for the fact that they may be expecting low usage with their audience (small businesses / startups) and therefore just receiving minimal costs to then charge £9.99/month. 

Thanks

PHK

Termination rates are set by Ofcom at about 0.5p. Even allowing for Other overheads that’s several thousand minutes before they run the risk of losing money. 

A_mgg

@PHK - so essentially at 5 minutes into a call there would be no further charge? Also, as they advertise ‘free diverts’ is this literally just a cover up for the minimal costs they would incur for their service? And I’ve always wondered generally, say 1p/minute charge, would the 1p charge be triggered if a call reached 60 seconds in to phone time? 

jcontest

If someone is calling you on the number they provide then they (AirLandline) receive the termination charge, and then they call your mobile and they pay the termination charge.  In essence, it cost nothing other than what they pay for the hardware processing. 

I know some providers give the hardware service for $1 a month (with a long contract) and that covers all hardware cost.  So I will go out on a limb here and say that (before removing staff / website / hardware / taxes) they will make around £9 per customer per month for the forwarding service.

I have a VoIP service with a inbound line on it (Local UK) that forwards to any number I wish.  My cost was £0.75p to set up and £0.75p a month and I pay about 1.5pence pm for it to go to a mobile.  I would hope that this "Air" landline company gives quality better than cheap VoIP providers.  One thing that I notice is that they seem to only offer it as a inbound service, so when you return a call to someone it's going to show your mobile number (unless you block it).  For £9.99 a month I think you can find some that offer Video Chat, SMS, MMS, and Fax services attached.  As with all of these services, the biggest issue will be call quality (or sometimes, lack of).

My VoIP setup wouldn't be ideal for many (too much hassle), was just giving it for comparison.  Mine is mainly done because I make and receive a lot of international calls (multiple inbound numbers), Last month was about 3500 minutes of talk time and cost was £10.50.

A_mgg

@jcontest - thanks for your response. Makes sense for their hardware cost depending on their provider. I was looking over the weekend and came across a provider called Twilio, created an account and basically attempted to replicate services Airlandline offered and ticked most of them off with 'Flows' that can be created. The charges that Twilio have are initial purchase of phone number e.g. 85p, monthly charge to hold number £1, flows executed ( more than 5k flows / month = charges), usage (inbound local is 1p/mintue). 

In essence, Twilio looks to be cheaper as I am going to the source and building the infrastructure/developing myself. The key is the usage at 1p/minute inbound call whereby for me I can't expect to generate usage costs racking up greater than say £6/month so Twilio is the cost efficient option, but I am still interested in how Airlandline would be confident to charge the static £9.99/month charge that covers general expected overheads their side but then dynamic inbound call usage - as each client will have varying usage and they do not ask for say expected or floating usage to then alter your plan accordingly, its very much "Here's the total charge for the month and that's that." What about clients who are receiving a lot of calls?
 I think my question is, are there guesses as to who Airlandline's provider may be? I have seen that custom fixed rate usage plans can be setup for a phone number in Twilio, but say for AirLandline to do this they'd need to test a client's usage for several months first, which then wouldn't look good their side if the price to a client suddenly increased one month as their usage was being calculated in the background. 

Thanks

A_mgg

@jcontest - I traced the number I purchased from Airlandline back to a company called Tamartellecommunications, a UK based company who provide the phone numbers + all 'flows' (multi number divert, out of business hours responses, voicemail to email etc) + UNLIMITED calling usage for £9.99/month - the same that AirLandline charge per month for their service. So if AirLandline are essentially acting as the middle man, 'drop servicing' you could call it, how are they making any profit if they are charging the same monthly fee as their source provider of UK phone numbers?

Stumped!