[asterisk-biz] ITSP Billing Increments....?

[Yair Hakak]

hi,
 first of all, as far as i know, there are a lot of short calls. think
of all the calls that end in a voicemail box where the caller doesn't
leave a message. There is a lot of slack in 30 second minimums.

and, historically, 6/6 was used because 6 seconds is 10% of a minute -
it just makes the billing much easier - move the decimal point over 1
digit and that's it. 1/60 = 0.0166 (bar) which makes for one fugly
increment and means everything has to be rounded to reach a number
that doesn't have an infinite fraction at the end of it.

-yair

On Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 9:52 AM, Trixter aka Bret McDanel
<trixter at 0xdecafbad.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 2008-03-27 at 22:56 -0700, Douglas Garstang wrote:
> > So, I have a general question.
> >
> > What billing increments do ITSP's who terminate SIP->PSTN normally
> > bill in?
> >
> > We've been using carriers that bill 1/1, and the quality hasn't been
> > too good, lots of 503's etc. We just started testing with someone else
> > that offers much better ASR's (they failover internally between qwest,
> > global crossing etc), but they bill 30/6. According to THEM, only
> > companies that can't offer top quality routes bill 1/1.
> >
> > What's the deal here? Is this true?
>
> First, does it really matter?  How many calls do you make that are less
> than 30 seconds? Will the 6 second increment really affect your total
> price?  If the new price is higher, is the quality worth it?
>
>
> I am unsure if there is a relation between billing increments and
> quality, but ok.
>
> As for what a provider bills at that is up to the provider itself.  This
> may be passed on from the carriers they are using to terminate calls.
> Generally on the PSTN (at least in the US) you will see a higher first
> minute and lower additional minutes.  This is because to set up the call
> a few queries have to be made which cost the carriers money.  Even if
> the phone isnt answered there are these costs.  So what they do is
> charge a higher first minute to recover these costs and when the phone
> is never answered they write that off into other costs which is paid for
> in part by that first minute and each additional minute.
>
> Now most residential service in the US is billed in whole minute
> increments while many business plans are 6 second increments.  Really
> there isnt any reason for them to not be each second increments.
>
> For short duration calls a higher billing increment is more profitable,
> which means that other costs can be absorbed by that.
>
> Since few PSTN based carriers offer 1/1 billing (I think this is
> changing though) on most plans it may be true that you cant do 1/1 with
> quality carriers as a general rule.  I do not however believe it to be
> an absolute rule, and again there is cost vs quality.
>
> Its very likely that their carriers are doing 30/6 or 6/6 to them, which
> are (or at least were) very common business billing plans.  I dont know
> why they did 6 seconds, the carriers claimed it had something to do with
> the way that duration was calculated over a decade ago, that the systems
> would not let them do 1/1.  I didnt believe it then, and certainly now
> its not true, or if it is there is no real reason for it to be true
> (intercarrier settlements are often enough millisecond resolution
> showing that it doesnt have to be true).
>
> Most of this is just to bill for "slack time", and it extends far beyond
> this, telecom USA did that 1010220 or whatever, 99 cents for the first
> 20 minutes, 5 cents there after.  Well if you do the math, its 5 cents
> for each minute, unless you hang up before 20.  They relied on the slack
> time for profit (this plan is many years old, it may be cheaper now).
>
>
> >
> --
> Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com     Bret McDanel
> Belfast +44 28 9099 6461        US +1 516 687 5200
> http://www.trxtel.com the phone company that pays you!
>
>
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