Add Kamloops to Free City List Please

[mikeeymike]

Are there plans to add Kamloops, BC to your list of Free Cities? it seems, there are much smaller cities on your BC list of cities than Kamloops... it would be great to see you expand your list to include Kamloops.

[TheHardy]

While I support this (I am in BC), we would then need to petition for it to be South Kamloops, North Kamloops, Westsyde, Aspen Park and Dallas too ... remember that Fongo sometimes only includes ONE ratecentre, not all the ones that are part of the traditional LCA ... (see Kelowna, Victoria, Winnipeg, Halifax etc threads....)

But I agree ... Kamloops, Chilliwack and Prince George are the current major oversights in BC for FREE calling.

Kamloops would also be a good candidate, IMHO, for DiD numbers ...

[Bloodsong]

Not a BC resident myself, but I must agree Kamploops just makes sense to me.

[TheHardy]

Not a BC resident myself, but I must agree Kamploops just makes sense to me.

I would love to know the reasoning that goes into the Fongo-braintrust thinking about WHICH cities are added to the Free Calling List.

NOTE: I am NOT meaning that as a disparaging comment, I just wish to know WHAT criteria are examined, and how it is determined. I know that for ONTARIO, the known centre of the universe, there are far more covered ratecentres of a much smaller nature than the rest of "wilderness" Canada ... (now THIS was a facetious comment...)

[Jake]

Let's take guesses and decide ourselves

Here's mine.

Fongo doesn't actually control what numbers it has, because Fongo is a spin off from Fibernetics. Fibernetics is for businesses so isn't really interested in how many residents there are, or how many students there are. What they would be interested in is how large the possible customer base of businesses is. No businesses would give little reason for them to buy dids. They certainly won't buy a new block of numbers just for my Aunt Mavis to get a free number, but they would if her back yard was turned into the biggest industrial estate in Canada with adjoining office complexes.

[TheHardy]

Let's take guesses and decide ourselves

Here's mine.

Fongo doesn't actually control what numbers it has, because Fongo is a spin off from Fibernetics. Fibernetics is for businesses so isn't really interested in how many residents there are, or how many students there are. What they would be interested in is how large the possible customer base of businesses is. No businesses would give little reason for them to buy dids. They certainly won't buy a new block of numbers just for my Aunt Mavis to get a free number, but they would if her back yard was turned into the biggest industrial estate in Canada with adjoining office complexes.

Valid guesswork ... however, Kamloops, Kelowna, Prince George, Chilliwack all would fit the bill for what your proposal is ... there are tons of businesses in those to be sure.

Then again, remember that the premise of my question was not DID's, but rather FREE CALLING cities ... for DID's, your thinking is solid ... but what is the rationale behind just adding a free calling city?? Isn't the money there (however small per actual UNIT), the CALL COMPLETION charge, where Fibernetics would get reimbursed as a CLEC by the ILEC??

[Bloodsong]

For free calling cities it would seem to me that it makes sense to be based on things such as population density, population growth, business growth, census data such as age group (How dense is the population of people who understand VoIP?) Per Capita income (How much demand is there likely to be for this service?)

It also seems likely that they can only terminate free calls in locations close to a rate center which they have access to, I imagine this has something to do with corporate purchasing, and as a free service with limited flow, they must grow slowly enough not to deplete the coffers.

I'm trying to help FPL grow in my area by offering as part of my usual I.T. Consultancy, help with set-up, configuration, troubleshooting and support of FPL VoIP lines in my area. I live in cottage country and a lot of the customer worries about not having a physical pressence for troubleshooting etc. are easilly alleviated by the offer to be here when/if something should go wrong.

The other thing I've noticed that helps people adopt VoIP are a clear explanation of how a UPS works and that by putting their Router and ATA on a UPS (now rather affordable in the <$60 range) they can ensure the ability to place emergency calls, check-in with family etc. even during a blackout or storm. Unless of course Cable/POTS are down in which case no one would be able to communicate anyway.

The relevance of helping growth of course comes from an increase in revenue, and thus more money to spend on expansion into new rate-centers, projects/developers and the dreaded third-party software.

[TheHardy]

Good to hear, Bloodsong. I think you are right in your analysis ... I mean, there is a cost associated with doing everything, but as you state, there is also the upside. FPL has not really said too much about their business model and where they all generate their revenues from, so a lot of this is all guesswork and educated theories. Some more educated than others, but still hypotheses at best.

As for costs to expand into an area, there is the need to have some kind of a POP, or at least a "friendly-relation" with another carrier that does have a POP; raises the question about how FPL/Fongo was able to expand into the new areas when they kicked off DV (or just before), as officially Fibernetics does not APPEAR to have any POP in those areas ... plus, there is such inconsistency between a lot of the new additional cities that breaks the generally accepted idea about population density etc ... (local to me example - why HOPE and not CHILLIWACK?). The discontinuous nature of the calling areas of the cities (not their wireline LCA) is also perplexing to me!