The wholesale carrier service is considered as one of the most profitable concepts in the telecommunication industry having special relevance for the fastest growing business sectors. The internet telephony services are gaining importance among many, especially business houses which have the zeal of making their presence felt.

These advanced services allow the users to experience cost-effective connectivity over next generation applications and services. Apart from being cost effective, these services are also backed with excellent voice quality. In addition, the services also facilitate the unification of the communication structure of the various branches of business houses. All these become possible with VoIP, wherein calls are routed over the internet to the diverse business destinations at comparatively lower rates. The fiber optics used in the internet telephony services empowers the business communication and that too at significantly lower costs. In turn, this has led to the increase in the number of providers of wholesale carrier services, so that they can keep up with growing demand for internet telephony solutions.

The term VoIP carrier can be defined as a channel through which Voice over IP services reach the end-users. The potential providers of wholesale carrier services together with resellers can procure VoIP minutes from the Tier 1 providers and then sell them off to the end users. Therefore, it can be said that wholesalers build a pivotal link between the Tier1 providers and end-users. The wholesaler carrier services are considered as a valuable concept for entities that have a large customer base and efficient as well as effective marketing team. These entities can make the most of these services and make their mark in the domain of IP telephony.

The present internet telephony market is flooded with a number of service providers that deliver wholesale VoIP solutions. As a matter of fact, selecting the best provider would be context specific and the priority of the wholesaler in question. The important guidelines to follow are mentioned below:

The wholesaler must concentrate on quality of services that the provider is offering such as Average call duration (ACD), Average Success Ratio (ASR) and Post Dial Delay (PDD). As a matter of fact the wholesaler must look for a provider of wholesale carrier services that offers minutes with a number of "points of presence" and supporting routes. The providers must offer the proper monitoring of their services, efficiency in internal operations as well as online real time billing for the benefit of the customers.

While selecting a provider, one must compare the call charges and the least cost routing that will lead to more profits. This helps the wholesalers to opt for the provider that offers minimum tariff accompanied with various value-added services. This ensures that the calls are transmitted through the least expensive routes.

Depending upon the specific needs and requirements, the VoIP carriers provide a number of services to their end-users. As of now, the providers of carrier services have developed their own network of gateways and switches that help them to offer a number of support functions such as facilitating hardware, and monitoring of call volume & call quality.