VOIP Tech Chat → Re: [Asterisk] What about Flowroute for faxing?

I mean look at the HQ address filed with the FCC (which itself is not really evidence of anything other than a filing) - its just the company they used to incorporate, their registered agent in Nevada (just because that is a requirement) named Mail Link LLC
848 N RAINBOW BLVD, Las Vegas - not a real office for Flowroute - just meets minimal incorporation requirements for a business to be incorporated in Nevada which has attractive tax advantages

that gives no confidence at all to us

First off, I really have to commend you for doing such great research on a company before making such a hard business decision as choosing a primary telecom provider. If I were your customer, I'd definitely appreciate the due diligence you've exhibited.

I would like to open up a bit and hopefully clear up the "shadowy" aspects of our company background.

Flowroute was founded in 2007 as a Nevada LLC. We did this for a number of business reasons. As a startup, we were working in facilities both in California and Nevada. We do use a registered agent in Nevada because in our first few years, our addresses were shifting as we were trying to find a permanent home for our operations.

As of early 2012, we've moved all operations and hunkered down in Seattle, WA. We now have an office in Downtown Seattle located on 2nd & University. You can feel free to visit us (anyone really) if you'd like to meet our departments and team to put some faces that keep the company afloat. Our address here is: 1221 Second Ave. Ste 330. Just ring us before you drop in

Some changes everyone will be seeing over the next year:
- The obvious address change on our contact page
- We'll retain the Nevada telephone number, but will also offer a local Seattle number.

If you have any other questions about our company, feel free to ping me on linkedIn/email/phone/etc.

Oh, and we do take T.38 pretty seriously here

Thanks for the info!

Now, I know who you are, but many folks don't, so you might want to specify that....

thank you!!
now, as I've said before, principals and staff from carriers should probably not post here and get into back and forths on this public bulletin board as some of them do
your post, however, was not so much a back and forth but more of an introduction so thank you

suffice it to say that I have legal training and have incorporated many businesses over the years, and simply because you chose Nevada or Delaware etc. is not the issue, it is more that you had your agent of service address listed as your corporate HQ on your website - glad you will now be changing that - it brings trust if you are not afraid to disclose your HQ address

I have no qualms about virtual companies or telecommuting. One of my favorites companies is 37signals who has staff spread all around but then did hunker down and have a HQ as well in Chicago which has given them more trust. They also started their SAAS with hosted servers and ultimately moved to their own gear co-located in Chicago to allow better service to their customers.

You are providing telco service. People will rely on it for not only personal calls but also for business and even for emergencies at times. Aside from what you need to do as a vendor as a bare minimum legally, can you talk a bit more about your infrastructure. No secrets - just how you have it arranged at the moment. Do you host servers? Do you co-locate? Do you use a big data center or more than one? Who runs the datacenter? Are you using proprietary software to manage aspects of the service or billing? Which aspects? Do you rely on one or more companies to provide you with DID termination for your customers? Who is that? You only accept Amazon payments and not credit cards directly and not paypal. Please discuss briefly. Also, what do you have in terms of service backup and staff backup? What if you and your partner in the business are injured? Are others capable of continuing the service at a high level of skill?

Please share or better yet, share on your website and provide a link here - you should not have to be posting here if you don't want to.

Ah, some links/additional info might help

»www.linkedin.com/in/seanhsieh
sean [ at ] flowroute.com

wait a minute - that is me!
just kidding

do you have info on the tech side of flowroute?

I've updated the post because there were some inaccuracies in the last version. This corrects some technical errors and provides more accurate and detailed information.

No we do not use hosted servers and we don't offer co-location services.
Big data center: Yes, we have equipment across 3 data centers: Southern California / Las Vegas, Nevada / Seattle, Washington. These data centers house equipment that handles signaling. Audio streams take a direct path to media gateways for optimization purposes.
Proprietary software for service/billing? We run a in-house developed service delivery and billing platform. We are also big believers & supporters of open-source projects.
Termination & Origination Partners: We peer with major and regional telcos across the US and around the world.
Toll-free: We are certified as a RESPORG with SMS/800 and our RESPORG ID is FWR01. (I mistakenly posted that we have our own CIC code before. We do not have our own CIC code, but are rather in the process of applying for a Feature Group D CIC code with NANPA.)
Credit card payments: We started off with Amazon FPS for credit card payments (which allows for ACH and wire transfers as well). We are looking forward to expanding payment methods for our customers.
Service backup: We provide redundancy in our service delivery. We will be opening up the Seattle, WA infrastructure to our customers soon as an additional point of redundancy. We also offer an SLA for carrier customers.
Staff backup: Flowroute has 3 founders, but that isn't the company. We have a hard-matched operations & support staff. Our team also include a dev, marketing, admin, and legal team. We have a tight-knit family mentality (yes, we do occasionally accidentally eat each others food from the fridge, but we're pretty good about making up for it).

Our website is currently being revamped, but some of this content, along with a company profile and infrastructure page, will make it up in the new version of the site.
Why wouldn't I want to post on here? I'm in the exact same boat as everyone here. We all need a place where we can get some good feedback on the services that are out here.

thanks for detailed reply

in terms of some of the other carriers and vendors you use, are there any of those that you use most often?

(when I asked about hosting and co-locating, I meant to ask if you used hosted equipment or if you co-located your own gear - to clarify, you do co-locate your own gear in the all the datacenters you use or just a portion of the 3 data centers ?)

kudos on your website from the beginning, but it is getting a little long in the teeth, keep up the good work and spread your message far and wide

last question - can you provide estimated annual revenue? thanks

Please don't change it *too* much...your control panel is already the best. So I hope that whatever change happens doesn't simply occur for changes' sake.

-- Nathan

We're a private company, so that information is a bit confidential. However, is there a specific question I can answer about our business and growth?

Thanks! We've actually had a bunch of great feedback from our customers who are managing thousands of DIDs on ways to optimize workflows. They're not going to be huge re-vamps where you'll have to figure out how to use our service again, but more evolutionary updates to make management quick and fun.

A private company can divulge its sales. That does not mean its profits. That would help for some to decide if flowroute has adequate resources for day to day reliability, etc.

But if you are not comfortable with that question, can you generally discuss your growth since starting in a way that does not feel like you are divulging private info?

What information do you divulge when [your] customers ask you the exact same question?

we divulge our sales
period