[asterisk-biz] Free DIDs

[Trixter aka Bret McDanel]

On Thu, 2009-09-24 at 12:27 +0300, Dovid Bender wrote:
> AT&T didn't want to pay them because they said that they were not 
> terminating the call and they were just passing it on. They now has set up 
> (or when we met them they were setting up) a new system where the calls 
> would be free and the FCC said they were allowed to do it and AT&T would 
> have to pay. 
> 

It wasnt just AT&T although they were first :)  Qwest tried to argue
that a conference terminates at the callers lines, so if 10 people call
a conference access charges should be paid to the other 9 carriers.  The
FCC flat out rejected that argument as not only being silly but rather
stupid.

Sprint claims that conferences are a carrier only service, and that no
non-carriers can run a conference.  This argument has yet to be heard,
but that is what they are asserting.  I do not think they will be
successful with it.

In all cases it boils down to the carriers want to charge a tiny bit of
money to terminate a call rather than what it costs.  Then they dislike
it when people make calls in excess of what that rate is.  

The FCC said in "audiotext v AT&T" that 1. arbitrage is legal and 2. the
carriers cant complain if they charge less than the costs, its on them
to protect themselves with ratios, appropriate fees, etc. (see para 35)

I did notice that all the carriers who refused to pay termination fees
for all of these services did not issue a refund to their customers for
any part of the call, so it seems they like to bill for phone calls just
not pay for them.


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