We are a carrier-grade wholesale VoIP provider offering high-quality SIP trunking and DIDs (phone numbers) at the most competitive rates. Our service is very flexible and scales down from the VoIP hobbyist, up to the largest call centers.
We run a prepaid service where you must keep a positive account balance to avoid service interruption. You can purchase services while logged into your Flowroute account and funds will be debited from your account balance. We'll give you $0.25 free test credit when you signup. After you've used it you must make a $35 opening deposit to continue using services. All deposits you make after that must be at least $20.
At the moment we only support SIP for signaling. As for media codices/codecs, we support G.711-ulaw and G.729. Most free or open-source PBXs are not packaged with the G.729 codec due to licensing issues. We recommend that you install it for more efficient bandwidth usage and route availability.
We currently accept payments through Amazon Payments. We also accept wire transfers for larger payments.
Yes, we allow our customers to set a maximum outbound rate for calls. This rate is set to $0.12/min when you first sign up. However, we strongly suggest that you tailor this rate to your needs.
We also advise that you follow some general security practices in order to minimize fraud on your account:
VoIP fraud patterns are constantly evolving today and we are doing our part to develop increasingly sophisticated detection and prevention measures. The best line of defense is always the security of your own systems.
Please visit our DID page for more details on what area codes are currently available.
Yes, we allow ports both ways. Port orders into Flowroute are $7.50 for single-number orders. Port orders with up to 100 contiguous numbers are $7.50 for the first number plus $7.50 for each additional number. Once logged in, customers can submit their port requests using our automated LNP submission form.
We pass Caller-ID, but do not guarantee successful transmission. We are able to transmit Caller-ID to most parts of the USA and Canada as well as to some international destinations.
We transmit Caller-ID based on the presence of one of the following header fields in order of preference: "P-Asserted-Identity", "Remote-Party-ID" or "From:".
Yes, unlike many other providers we terminate toll free NANPA traffic free of charge.
The federal Universal Service Fund (FUSF) is a federal program created by Congress in order to help ensure telecommunications services are available to all consumers nationwide. The FUSF is administered by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC). The FCC requires all telecommunications providers to contribute to the FUSF based upon a percentage of their interstate and international end-user telecommunications revenues. This percentage is known as the FUSF contribution factor, is adjusted quarterly by the FCC, and has been as high as 15.5%. The current contribution factor is available on the FCC's website at http://www.fcc.gov/omd/contribution-factor.html. You can also read more about the FUSF by visiting http://www.fcc.gov/wcb/tapd/universal_service/ or http://www.usac.org.
Telecommunications providers that contribute to the program, whether directly or indirectly, are permitted to recover these FUSF contributions from their customers through FUSF recovery charges. FUSF recovery charges are discretionary charges that the FCC allows, and are not taxes or charges that are required by the government. If Flowroute must contribute to the FUSF program based upon the services provided to a customer, these FUSF charges will be automatically assessed on the customer's bill as permitted under applicable FCC regulations.
In most cases, a customer will only be exempt from Flowroute's FUSF charges if the customer is a telecommunications service provider (including resellers) that pays FUSF contributions directly to USAC. Generally, customers that are considered end-users of Flowroute's services and reseller customers that are considered "de minimis" for FUSF contribution purposes will not be exempt from Flowroute's FUSF charges. Flowroute will consider any customer that signs up for a service account under the "Individual", "Business", or "Business Reseller" usage categories as end-users subject to FUSF charges. Customers that sign up for a Flowroute account under the "Carrier / Service Provider" usage category (and are telecommunications service providers or resellers properly registered with the FCC or USAC) may be exempt from Flowroute's FUSF charges depending on the customer's own FUSF contribution status.
Under FCC rules and policies, telecommunications service providers (including resellers) that pay FUSF contributions directly to USAC are typically exempt from paying FUSF charges to underlying providers such as Flowroute. Accordingly, Flowroute will not bill FUSF charges to a customer that is a telecommunications services reseller and demonstrates to Flowroute's reasonable satisfaction that the customer: (a) has registered with the FCC and/or USAC under the FUSF program; (b) has a valid Filer 499 ID as proof of such registration; and (c) is listed on the FCC's website as a direct contributor to the FUSF program, or can certify to Flowroute that the customer is only reselling Flowroute's services to other direct contributors to the FUSF program. Other limited exemptions from Flowroute's FUSF charges may apply in specific situations and will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
Flowroute customers claiming exemptions from FUSF charges will be required to submit applicable exemption certifications to Flowroute at account signup, as well as resubmit such certifications to Flowroute on an annual basis, whenever the customer's exemption status changes, or as requested by Flowroute. All claimed exemptions from Flowroute's FUSF charges are subject to verification.
Flowroute bills FUSF charges to cover its own FUSF contribution obligations. Flowroute does not pay FUSF contributions on any customer's behalf since all telecommunications providers are responsible for their own FUSF compliance. Thus, even if a customer pays FUSF charges to Flowroute, the customer may still have its own independent FUSF contribution and/or filing obligations with the FCC or USAC. Customers are solely responsible for ensuring compliance with such obligations.
The sip.flowroute.com domain uses SRV records to failover between multiple servers for high-availability. Also, with our cutting-edge architecture, only the signaling path is routed through our sip proxies, the media path is optimized and RTP is transmitted point to point between your servers and our media gateways.
No, we take our customers' privacy very seriously and do not release customer information unless we are legally required to do so. Please see our Privacy Policy for more details.
You can view completed call records, associated costs for calls and purchases, and remaining balance in realtime once you've logged into your account.
No, at this time our services are all strictly prepaid.
We use the E.164 format: [CountryCode][Number]
Examples:
NOTE: DO NOT dial NANPA (Country code +1) calls using 10 digit format (NPA-NXX-XXXX). It will be recognized as an international call.
For most international destinations we can handle burst traffic in excess of 1000 simultaneous sessions. Simultaneous sessions may be restricted for accounts with low remaining balances.