[asterisk-biz] Free DIDs

[Trixter aka Bret McDanel]

On Sat, 2009-08-15 at 22:43 -0700, Nitzan Kon wrote:

> > They said its on the carriers to charge what it costs 
> > and not whine because they sold service for below their
> > cost and lost money.  Their contracts and tariffs need 
> > to include protections against losing money.  
> 
> Well, what we did is target and exclude some conference
> services from our free-calling plans. If users want to
> use those "for free" they should be the ones paying for it.


real carriers cant do that.  Real carriers that are licensed by the FCC
specifically are banned from that action (FCC  court cases over
conferences specifically). 

I think its shady for you to sell a 'free calling plan' but not actually
provide 'free calling' unless you specifically and openly say that its a
free calling plan but certain numbers are blacklisted because you dont
like that traffic.  I do not know the details of your plan so I cant say
either way which one of these you are doing.



> When I price a calling plan, I account for the majority
> of the calls. The majority of calls cost a fraction of
> a cent. When so-called "free" conference services cost
> 10 times that and artificially inflate the average per
> minute price - I don't see why I should raise my prices
> to match. 

I dont see why you should ever complain about losing money when you
offer a service and someone happens to use it.  If you read the FCC case
it states that carriers should put ratios and similar things in their
contracts instead of what AT&T did (who lost in the previously mentioned
case) and shut off service because it was not what they expected it to
be.  

If you advertise a price and a product, that product should be delivered
for that price.  I really blame shady business people for things like
"unlimited calling" when it really is not unlimited and they never
intended for it to be unlimited.  Look at Skype for example, they say
unlimited but their TOS says 10,000 minutes, and they have shut people
off after 3000 minutes if they didnt like the traffic.  This is
basically a bait and switch scam in my opinion, tricking users into
thinking they are going to get something and then delivering something
else.


> I'd rather just ban or exclude those services
> from the calling plan. It doesn't make sense for the
> user too - why would they want their calling plan to
> double in price?
> 

As long as you clearly and openly say this up front before they pay any
money I see no problem with it.  However if its buried in the TOS
through obscure language, or worse unstated or in such vague terms that
its really unclear what it means then the user really isnt making an
informed choice are they?  Again I dont know which you do, so I cant
comment on your service specifically.


> You're biased because you operate such a service, and I
> agree that it's LEGAL - but dealing with it is a PITA
> for carriers.
> 
its only a PITA if you try to lie to your customers and tell them its
unlimited when it really isnt, or tell them they can call numbers they
really cant.  If things are priced fairly and what they cost then its
never a problem. 

It sure would be great if I could get people to pay me money and never
use my service, and this seems to be the business model that many VoIP
companies want to operate under.  Offer unlimited service and then freak
out that someone thought the term "unlimited" means "without limits".
Offer flat rate service with 0 ratios and find out that users are LCRing
traffic that is all high cost (that shut down many ITSPs a couple years
ago).

I understand the marketing concerns of users wanting a simple billing
package, and the cost concerns of some billing packages.  I have no
problem with limits so long as they are openly and clearly disclosed.  I
actually want to see the FTC ban all the uses of the word "unlimited"
when it really isnt.

> > or under-pricing minutes and then complaining that people 
> > actually used the service.
> 
> So basically, we all should triple our rates, just so a
> few rural chat lines can keep their profit stream? I don't
> think so.

no that is not the only option.  That is certainly one option.  Ratios
is another option, one that was mentioned by the FCC (albeit tacitly
since the lack of ratio adherence is what caused AT&T to freak out) in
the case I was specifically talking about in that partially quoted
section.  

Others include minute caps (magicjack says 20 times the average users
volume, but its hard to know what the average users volume is - reports
put it at about 104 minutes a month) although I would think that those
caps should be disclosed.  Skype for example says 10,000 minutes, AT&T
Callvantage originally said 5,000 minutes (I dont think they do
anymore).  Broadvoice forces you into a higher rate plan saying its
"business traffic" if there is an appreciable amount of minutes.

The other aspect of this is companies like Tmobile will give you
unlimited, and they mean unlimited.  Boost mobile does too.  You can
call 24/7 and they do not say anything.  What they do is price it out so
that they make a lot of money on some customers, lose money on others,
and at the end it all balances out.  This is only a suitable model if
you have a large customer base to spread the costs out (its highly
similar to the insurance model).  

I am sure there are other options as well.

-- 
Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com     Bret McDanel
pgp key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x8AE5C721