Gray route and White route
When dealing with the VoIP, you often hear terms gray routes and white routes. The first thing that comes to mind is that it is something to do with being legal or illegal. That is accurately what it means.
When dialing a destination over VoIP, for instance from USA to Germany:
White route is completely legal where the call is originated and where it is terminated. In this example a white route will be legal to use both by the USA telecom authorities and the Germany telecom authorities.
Black route is illegal to use in the USA, does not matter if it is absolutely legal in Germany to receive calls from.
Gray route is completely legal in the USA to originate call from, but not legal in Germany to receive calls from.
Companies that provide gray routes, generally fake the source of the originated call. In our example, a user dialing over a gray route from the USA to Germany will not look like calling from the USA. Instead he might look as if calling from Ghana or Turkey. This is done to dodge the telecom authorities in Germany, for whom calling from Turkey will have different rates and regulations than calling from the USA. This makes sure that the route is outside of usual telco routing arrangements for peering and billing, and it means that someone, somewhere, is possibly losing money.
In addition, gray route could actually be completely legal in both countries, but have some other factors that prevent the carrier from selling it as white quality. In reality think of it more like economy and premium. If economy works, great. If not, just use premium.
Gray routes are created to make international calling more economic. Companies that use gray routes do not assurance high-quality of voice. Neither they do guarantee that they will always be there. You may get a cheaper calling card to call your country, because the supplier is using some gray route. However your card might not give you the same number of minutes as it promised because the provider’s gray route disappeared only after a day you bought its calling card, and it had to charge you more for some other relatively expensive route. Moreover you know how customer service works for these short lived calling card companies.
Grey routes are generally costly, but often just disappear without notice due to a telco realizing what is happening and blocking those routes.
Some claim that gray routes are unofficial, they are not illegal. It is regularly a type of arbitrage that someone find out.
For establishing a business, stay away from using gray routes, as they will hurt your business rapidly. Depending upon the nature of your business, if you find a gray route that gives you a cut-rate to a popular and usually expensive destination, then make the most of it while you can as it almost certainly will not last very long. But you are supposed to be prepared to accept bad quality, because no-one is expecting the voice traffic to be there in the first pace. This does not indicate that all gray routes have dreadful call quality. This also does not mean that all white routes have perfect call quality.
