5 Steps to Starting Your Own Telephone Company

Fed up with your local Telecom provider? Tired of poor customer service? In 5 easy steps you can start your own Telephone Company. In the new world of Open Source software, low cost hardware technology and the Internet, it is very easy for anyone to start their own Long Distance telephone company. Yes! You can start your own Long Distance Telephone Company for under $5,000. With the big boys charging 5 to 10 cents a minute North America wide, you can make money when your actual costs are less than 2 cents a minute. Let's take a look where we can spend our start up funding.

Your office costs will be pretty minimal as all you need are some business cards, a decent website, a maildrop and tab with your local coffee shop. This will set you back for less than a few hundred bucks.

Your biggest and monthly recurring cost (don't forget marketing costs) will be your Telecommunication Infrastructure costs. The two elements of these costs are co-location and local access or T1/PRI circuits. You need to locate your Telephone Carrier PBX in a Telco hotel or managed host environment. They provide the power, environmentals and the access to the various carrier circuits all in one place. Your carrier equipment sits right beside the racks used by the "Big Boys" in the industry.

You can probably negotiate all of this with a couple of PRI circuits for under $2000 per month. The MCI sales representative will be very happy to buy you lunch after you tell him that you also require LD termination. Now, take your credit card and stop buy Radio Shack for some hardware and software.

You now need to assemble your Telephone Carrier PBX. Thanks to the team of open source developers it is possible to get yourself a low cost solution. No need to call Nortel for a Central Office switch. First, you need to get a decent Intel P4 server and some LINUX software. This can be had for under $2000. Don't forget a back up drive.

Second, you need some software and the one you want is from Asterisk. Asterisk is the developer of software for an open source TDM/VOIP PBX. This is a free download but add $200 to get yourself some books and manuals as you will need them.

Third, you need to install network interface cards. You can get these from Digium or other manufacturers. They sell cards for the Asterisk TDM/VOIP PBX. You will need some cards for say 2 PRI cards. These will cost you about $800 each. If your marketing guys are optimistic, get a quad card.

Fourth, get a telecom technician that knows voice, data and Linux and start assembling the platform and making your interconnections.

Fifth, start your advertising campaign to your target market and start answering sales calls.

Congratulations! You are now the president and CEO of your own Telephone Company.