[asterisk-biz] Free DIDs

[Trixter aka Bret McDanel]

Just to expand on this a little bit, in a slightly new direction.
Verizon estimates that it will make $600,000,000 this year off of "extra
options" in voice mail prompts.  By expanding the voice mail menu
options (1 for urgent 2 to page, etc) and doing everything possible to
make sure that people stay on the phone for as long as possible they are
eating minutes off this.

Now verizon does not make a whole lot on people calling other verizon
customers, after all they give free calling to "in network" numbers.  So
where does this $600M come from?  

The only place that Verizon can bill for air time that is not in network
is if the caller is from a different telephone carrier, and since they
are not premium numbers this is access charges (for non US/CA people
mobiles and landlines are billed about the same here unlike most of the
rest of the world).

Basically the callers telephone company is paying for that, which
ultimately the caller does by way of a monthly subscription charge or a
per minute charge if the call is not local.

This is all off of 15-30 seconds of extra calling time per call at
probably the FCC cap of $0.007/minute (I think that cap applies to CMRS
providers).  It sure does take a whole lot of those calls to reach
$600M, which far exceeds any conferencing, or even what futurephone was
doing.  Add in all the other mobile providers that are doing the same
thing, and you really start to see a huge amount of money that no one is
really complaining about.


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