[asterisk-biz] ANI

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Mon, May 12, 2008 at 09:57:08PM +0200, Trixter aka Bret McDanel wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-05-12 at 15:43 -0400, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > When calls are dumped into the PSTN, they *have* to have valid ANI; too
> > much of the semantics of the entire remainder of the PSTN depends on it. 
> 
> That is not true, ANI is not used for routing or billing of the call,
> the BTN (billing telephone number) is used for billing.  Now some
> carriers use the ANI for intercarrier compensation, but that is not
> something that matters on the PSTN itself, and to that end phantom
> traffic can exist even with valid ANIs (traffic that is enough to
> complete the call but not enough to properly bill carriers for that
> call).

Unless I'm very much mistaken, ANI is a *delivery method*.   BTN is a
*label for a subscriber service* which is *delivered via* ANI.

So your assertion doesn't actually make a lot of sense.

If I am, let us say, an INWATS subscriber who is paying the bills for
calls delivered to me by an IXC, then what I get is indeed the BTN for
each call, and *how I get it* is via ANI.  

It's more important, of course, if I'm a transit IXC, moving a call
from one LEC to another: What I get had *better* be a Billing Telephone
Number, because that's what I'm gonna do with it: I'm gonna bill it.

> > But there has to be an ANI, and it has to point somewhere valid -- even
> > if it's the edge provider itself as proxy for the end sub.
> 
> ???

I don't see that my assertion there was at all difficult to understand.

> Case and point the federal government will often send calls out onto the
> pstn with a ani and caller id of 0000000000, which is less than valid.
> This disproves assertions that it has to point somewhere valid.

Nope, it proves that US federal government agencies often break (or,
less often, are exempt from) lots of laws and regulations, often to the
detriment of precisely the people those laws were designed to protect.

And the common usage is "case in point"

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
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