What is VoIP wholesale termination?

VoIP wholesale termination is the process of routing bulk voice call traffic from one carrier or business to its final destination through wholesale interconnect agreements. It is the carrier-grade layer beneath consumer and business phone services, enabling high-volume calls at fractional per-minute costs compared to retail pricing.

How do CLI routes differ from Non-CLI routes?

CLI routes preserve the original caller ID number through the full call path, which improves answer rates and meets regulatory requirements for outbound business calls. Non-CLI routes replace or remove the caller ID, making them suitable for anonymous high-volume traffic where the lowest possible cost per minute is the primary consideration.

What does FAS-free billing mean in wholesale voice?

FAS stands for False Answer Supervision — a billing practice where a carrier charges for a call that was never genuinely connected to a live party. FAS-free billing means you are only charged for calls where a real answer event is detected, eliminating a common source of inflated costs in lower-quality wholesale termination arrangements.

Why does STIR/SHAKEN attestation level matter?

STIR/SHAKEN attestation tells downstream networks how confident the originating carrier is that the caller ID is legitimate. Level A means the carrier fully verifies both the customer and the number. Higher attestation leads to better call delivery rates because analytics platforms and mobile carriers are less likely to label high-attestation calls as potential spam.

What is Least Cost Routing in VoIP wholesale termination?

Least Cost Routing is an automated system that evaluates available routes for every outbound call and selects the one that satisfies minimum quality thresholds — such as ASR and PDD targets — at the lowest per-minute rate. When a route degrades or fails, LCR automatically reroutes the call, maintaining quality while keeping costs predictable at scale.

VoIP Wholesale Termination: How It Works and What to Know

VoIP wholesale termination is the carrier-grade infrastructure that completes voice calls originating on one network by routing them through an intermediary wholesale carrier to their final destination, contrasting with retail VoIP lines, with businesses aggregating large call volumes benefiting from bulk wholesale rates rather than retail markups. Three route types apply: CLI routes that preserve caller ID for contact centers and outbound campaigns, Non-CLI routes that strip caller ID for cheaper anonymous high-volume traffic, and CC (Country Code) routes optimized for specific geographic destinations. Answer-Seizure Ratio and Post-Dial Delay are the two defining quality metrics, with a healthy premium route landing in the 60 to 80 percent ASR range and PDD staying under six seconds; False Answer Supervision (FAS) is a billing fraud where a terminator charges for calls that were never genuinely answered, so FAS-free billing means clients pay only for real connected time. STIR/SHAKEN attestation levels A through C cryptographically authenticate caller ID, with Level A attestation improving answer rates because downstream carriers treat unattested calls as higher risk, tied to US TRACED Act enforcement. Wholesale rates commonly run $0.003 to $0.01 per minute, a 40 to 70 percent saving versus retail, achieved systematically through Least Cost Routing that evaluates every call against quality thresholds like ASR, PDD, and MOS before selecting the cheapest qualifying path and failing over automatically if a route degrades. Softtop delivers Tier-1 interconnects across more than 150 countries, 99.99 percent uptime with a 24/7/365 NOC, CLI Routes with ASR targets of 60 to 80 percent, STIR/SHAKEN A-level attestation, FAS-free billing, native LCR, and a self-service portal with real-time CDRs so finance teams can reconcile spend daily instead of waiting for monthly invoices.