[asterisk-biz] Free DIDs

[Trixter aka Bret McDanel]

On Sun, 2009-08-16 at 19:54 -0400, Alex Balashov wrote:
> Trunking customers cherry-picking expensive rate centers from a plan 
> offered them retail as blended is a big problem, though.
> 

sorta that is what Audiotext v AT&T was about, granted it was actual
arbitrage, the FCC said that if you want a ratio you have to actually
put that into a contract or tariff.  AT&T did not put a ratio on traffic
to the UK, and audiotext only called 7xx PNS numbers for profit.  AT&T
got upset because they were losing money since Audiotext did not follow
some ratio they said in court documents they expected but never made as
part of the deal.  


This type of cherry picking is what caused some flat rate providers to
tank a couple years ago.  People would get every deck rate they could
and one or more flat rate providers.  Anything less than the flat rate
would go decked anything more would obviously go out the flat rate
provider, which means that its likely the flat rate provider lost money
on every call.  Most of them wanted or expected some ratio but never
actually said it to the customers.  

Even settlements between large telcos can have similar situations.  MCI
and Deutche Telecom have a deal (or had at least) where instead of cash
they would swap minute for minute.  MCI got kinda upset when they
terminated gobs of minutes to DT who then sold really cheap US
termination and only high cost went over that.  MCI ended up losing a
lot of money given the cost difference of the minutes.  They shut it off
for at least a while, but that is what happens when you dont have ratio
requirements.

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