[asterisk-biz] USA termination-dialer traffic

[Alex Balashov]

Tom Moore wrote:

> Actually your probably right.
> This dialing is done manually by a few people.
> It isn't a computer doing the dialing and then waiting for the live agents
> to answer the answered calls.

What matters to carriers and ITSPs is not how the dialing is 
initiated, but:

1) CPS - the pace of dialing, measured in calls setup requests per second.

Higher CPS creates more load on the system.  The elephantine claims of 
marketing aside, there's very little equipment out there - including 
big-iron, large-scale commercial equipment - that won't start to 
experience problems after a few dozen CPS at most.

Concurrency is a huge issue.  Spikes in call load that overwhelm the 
service delivery apparatus at inopportune moments are also undesirable.

2) ASR - The percentage of calls that are to bad/disconnected/stale 
numbers and/or the percentage of calls that go unanswered.

Most carriers and ITSPs only start billing once the call is actually 
picked up at the far end.  That means that if, say, 60% of the calls 
sent through the system never get picked up, that's an awful lot of 
processing, trunk channels, timeslots, bandwidth, etc, etc. tied up on 
the system relative to the amount of billable minutes extracted.

...

ITSPs and carriers look very unfavourably upon outbound dialer traffic 
of high CPS and low ASR.  If you tell them that's the kind of traffic 
you'll be sending, they will be happy to give you their higher rates, 
or bill you from start of call initiation.  If you don't tell them, 
they'll be happy to deactivate your service once they notice it.

Can't really blame them;  nobody wants this kind of low-margin, 
high-utilisation traffic on their system.  It brings other 
externalities as well, like potential legal issues that require the 
service provider to get involved, etc. If I were a service provider, I 
certainly would avoid it like the plague.

Anyway, the point is that if you can get a sufficiently large amount 
of people to produce these effects by manual dialing, that won't 
change the service provider's view of the traffic nor the latter's 
essential characteristics.  The automated dialing aspect is not the 
trigger.  You can have a well-behaved automatic dialer, or a hostile 
manual-dial call center.

-- Alex

-- 
Alex Balashov - Principal
Evariste Systems
Web     : http://www.evaristesys.com/
Tel     : (+1) (678) 954-0670
Direct  : (+1) (678) 954-0671