Wholesale Voice Guides
Wholesale voice, explained from first rate deck to live traffic
32 guides on how wholesale voice works, how routes are priced and measured, what carriers verify at onboarding, and how to protect your traffic.
Start here
Understand the wholesale voice layer
How carriers, resellers, and high-volume buyers connect, and the terms the rest of the guides assume.
Wholesale VoIP: How It Works and Who Buys It
The carrier ecosystem, origination versus termination, and how calls move through the wholesale layer.
Read guide →Wholesale Voice Termination
How outbound calls reach any phone, the route types, the quality metrics buyers track, and how to evaluate a provider.
Read guide →Peering vs Transit for Wholesale Voice
Costs and reach of each model, and what "Tier 1" means in internet routing and in voice.
Read guide →What Is a CLEC?
The FCC rule definition, the 1996 incumbent test, and what the difference means for wholesale buyers.
Read guide →What Is SIP Trunking?
How SIP trunks connect a phone system to the public network, and how signaling, media, and codecs work.
Read guide →What Is a DID Number?
How direct inward dialing works, the number types, SIP delivery, porting rules, and E.164 format.
Read guide →Price and compare
Read rates and compare offers fairly
A per-minute rate is only one column. These guides cover the rest of the deck and the terms around it.
How to Read a Wholesale Rate Deck
Prefixes, rates, billing increments, route class, and effective dates, and how to compare two decks.
Read guide →Billing Increments: 60/60, 6/6, and Prepay vs Postpay
How increments change what each call costs, with worked examples and minimum commit terms.
Read guide →Least-Cost vs Quality-Based Routing
How each model picks a route, and why the cheapest path is not always the best outcome.
Read guide →Reduce Call Center Termination Costs
Ways to lower cost per minute without trading away answer rate.
Read guide →Measure and test
Measure route quality and test before you commit
The metrics carriers report, what each one can and cannot show, and how to run a pilot.
ASR, ACD, PDD, and MOS Explained
Formulas for ASR and ACD, what PDD and MOS show, and questions to ask before you commit traffic.
Read guide →What Is ACD in VoIP?
Average call duration, why call center traffic runs low, and how it affects route selection and pricing.
Read guide →What Is CPS in VoIP?
Calls per second, why it matters for predictive dialers, and how it differs from concurrency.
Read guide →Post-Dial Delay (PDD)
What PDD is, the root causes, and how to reduce it.
Read guide →Network Effectiveness Ratio (NER)
What NER measures and how it differs from ASR.
Read guide →False Answer Supervision (FAS)
How FAS works, the CDR patterns that expose it, and how to protect your traffic.
Read guide →How to Test a Wholesale Route
A controlled pre-production test plan before you send live traffic.
Read guide →Onboard and comply
What carriers verify and what the rules require
Identity checks, FCC filings, caller ID authentication, number porting, and messaging registration.
Wholesale VoIP KYC
What carriers verify before an account can send traffic, and how to prepare your documents.
Read guide →RMD, Form 499, and STIR/SHAKEN
What the Robocall Mitigation Database, FCC Form 499, and attestation require of wholesale providers.
Read guide →What Is STIR/SHAKEN?
How caller ID authentication works, what the attestation levels mean, and why calls show as spam.
Read guide →Wholesale Number Porting (LNP)
Port requests, validation, firm order confirmation, and what to prepare.
Read guide →Wholesale SMS Termination and 10DLC
10DLC registration, carrier fees, and why unregistered traffic is blocked.
Read guide →Protect traffic
Fraud, abuse, and traceback
The patterns that inflate cost, the controls that address them, and what a traceback request asks of a provider.
IRSF vs Toll Fraud
How they differ in target, payment flow, and warning signs, and the controls for each.
Read guide →Traffic Pumping and Access Stimulation
How it inflates termination cost, what the FCC 2019 order changed, and the warning signs.
Read guide →Traceback Requests Explained
Who can send one, the 24-hour response rule, and what a complete response contains.
Read guide →VoIP Toll Fraud Prevention
The main attack types and the controls that protect a business phone system.
Read guide →Call center traffic
CC routes for dialer and BPO traffic
Outbound dialer traffic has a different shape from ordinary voice. These guides explain the route type built for it.
What Are CC Routes?
What the term means in wholesale VoIP, who buys them, and why dialer traffic needs its own route type.
Read guide →How CC Routes Work
The path from a predictive dialer through a route to the destination carrier.
Read guide →CC Routes vs CLI Routes
How the two terms relate and when each one applies.
Read guide →CC Routes vs NCLI Routes
Why call center traffic usually runs on CLI-based routes, and where NCLI still fits.
Read guide →How to Choose a CC Routes Provider
Questions to ask before committing volume, beyond who quotes the lowest rate.
Read guide →SIP Trunk Capacity Planning
How to calculate concurrent channels and what happens when you run out.
Read guide →Terms
Wholesale terms in one place
Short definitions, each linked to the guide that covers it in full. For UCaaS and contact center terms, see the main glossary.
- ACD
- Average call duration. In wholesale voice this is not the contact center term Automatic Call Distributor.
- Read the guide →
- NER
- Network effectiveness ratio: whether the network delivered the call to the destination, counting busy and no-answer as delivered.
- Read the guide →
- CLI / NCLI
- CLI routes preserve the originating caller ID. NCLI routes strip or substitute it.
- Read the guide →
- FAS
- False answer supervision: a carrier signals answer, and starts billing, before a live party picks up.
- Read the guide →
- Rate deck
- The per-destination price list a carrier issues, with prefixes, rates, increments, and effective dates.
- Read the guide →
- KYC
- Know your customer: how a carrier decides whether to put its network and regulatory filings behind a new account.
- Read the guide →
- RMD
- Robocall Mitigation Database: the FCC database where providers file robocall mitigation certifications.
- Read the guide →
- Traceback
- A request that follows a suspicious call back through providers toward its origin.
- Read the guide →
- IRSF
- International revenue share fraud: a kind of toll fraud where calls go to premium-rate numbers and the fraudster collects part of the charge.
- Read the guide →
Tools and routes
Run the numbers, then talk routes
Paste your call durations and compare 60/60, 6/6, 30/6, and 1/1 billing.
View page → Route Cost CalculatorCompare routes by cost per answered call and per connected minute.
View page → CC RoutesWholesale CC routes for USA and Canada dialer traffic.
View page → CC Routes PricingHow CC route pricing is built, and the rate deck request form.
View page → A-Z TerminationInternational termination and the A-Z rate deck.
View page → Dialer Compatible RoutesConnecting Vicidial, GoAutoDial, and Asterisk dialers over standard SIP.
View page → VoIP for Call CentersHow termination works in a contact center and how to switch without a blind cutover.
View page →Need a rate deck for your traffic?
Use the contact form to send your destinations, peak CPS, and monthly volume.