[Asterisk-Users] Bill seconds

Thu Jun 16 20:04:03 MST 2005

Americo Sanchez C. wrote:

>
>
>> From: David John Walsh <davidjohnwalsh at gmail.com>
>> Reply-To: David John Walsh <davidjohnwalsh at gmail.com>,Asterisk Users 
>> Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion 
>> <asterisk-users at lists.digium.com>
>> To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion 
>> <asterisk-users at lists.digium.com>
>> Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Bill seconds
>> Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 18:36:00 +0100
>>
>> Another way I have seen this done is to sell units, not pounds and 
>> pence credit
>>
>> eg a £2 calling card has 160 units (ratio of 80 units to the pound).
>>
>> If you were to charge 8p per min you make that 8 units per min.   This
>> gives you a 20% increase which might help if your on per second
>> billing to your upstream carrier.
>>
>> otherwise you need to make changes to your rating engine  with a "
>> /60*58 " to re-rate all calls back to a second ( /60) and move the
>> minuite charge to be a 58 second minuit (*58)
>
> What configuration files I must to edit to achieved this?

You would have to actually go in and edit astcc.agi.  I have a patch in 
the bugtracker which simplifies and corrects rating issues in astcc.agi. 

Darren Wiebe
darren at aleph-com.net

>
>>
>> how that is achived needs you to give specific information on which
>> calling card platform you are using.
>
> I am using ASTCC.

>>
>> You may have a problem in defining  the rates as "per minuite" if they
>> are not a widely understood minuite legally - it depends on the laws
>> of your country (in the UK the Trades Descriptions Act would apply and
>> you'd be hit hard)
>>
>> David
>>
>>
>>
>> On 16/06/05, Race Vanderdecken <asteriskusers at codetyrant.com> wrote:
>> > Your customers are not going to like this.
>> >
>> > You have to change the way you bill for calls.
>> >
>> > For $1 your customer gets 60 seconds worth of phone time. However you
>> > have to also charge, like the Bells used to, for setup and teardown
>> > time. Remember the operator used to say " Deposit $1.85 for the first
>> > three minutes" and then it would be 30 cents per minute after that.
>> >
>> > Buy a phone card from a competitor and look at the fine print on the
>> > card.
>> >
>> > You charge buy seconds they are connected to your system, not for the
>> > time they are actually talking to the remote party.
>> >
>> > Example:
>> >
>> > To set up the call you charge 10 seconds, and to stop the call you
>> > charge 5 seconds. So the customer only gets 45 seconds of call 
>> time. You
>> > get a 15 second cushion.
>> >
>> > Does not seem fair does it. But if they buy an hour 3600 seconds worth
>> > of calls the missing 15 seconds won't be noticed.
>> >
>> > You can go further.
>> >
>> > Say they buy a 3600 second card. When they call to check their time 
>> the
>> > first time on the card you tell them they have 60 minutes, but you
>> > charge them 30 seconds for asking. Set up the code so that every time
>> > they call you have too fields to track call time. The time they think
>> > they have and the time you know they have.
>> >
>> > You tell them they have 45 minutes, but the other field knows they 
>> only
>> > have 30 minutes. If they ask then your script says "45 minutes 
>> left" but
>> > you cut them off when the use 30.
>> >
>> > Then you chip away each time the call. 10 seconds for making a 
>> call, and
>> > 5 seconds when they hang up. This way you are always in credit and can
>> > cut them off without loosing money.
>> >
>> > Some card vendors go even further. They sell 3600 seconds, but each 
>> time
>> > a call is made they whack a random percentage of the time.
>> >
>> > Worse yet their card system will randomly or systematically hang up on
>> > callers. This will cause the user to redial the call and get hit with
>> > connection charges that vary.
>> >
>> > Customers eventually figure out which cards do this type of chicanery
>> > and they stop buying them, but only if there is a competitor for the
>> > route they want to call.
>> >
>> > Such is the world of unregulated phone calls. Not pretty is it.
>> >
>> > Charging time for each call is part of the business. If you don't want
>> > to charge time to setup and teardown then you have to charge more per
>> > minute. Your customers get all the time the pay for down to the 
>> second,
>> > but you are going to have to charge more per minute or you will be in
>> > the boat you are in now.
>> >
>> > Race "the tyrant" Vanderdecken
>> >
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> > From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com
>> > [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Darren
>> > Wiebe
>> > Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2005 1:06 AM
>> > To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
>> > Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Bill seconds
>> >
>> > I've done a little thinking on this one....  If you are using 
>> ASTCC, it
>> > would be fairly straightforward to edit it and have it make a 2 second
>> > adjustment.  If your using another solution it probably would be 
>> fairly
>> > easy also...
>> >
>> > Darren Wiebe
>> > darren at aleph-com.net
>> >
>> > Americo Sanchez C. wrote:
>> >
>> > >
>> > > Hi all,
>> > >
>> > > We've installed Asterisk on a rural development project and we're
>> > > testing a prepaid phone service. As far as now we're having terrific
>> > > service results but there's a problem with the calls billing at our
>> > > local telecom. For instance, a farmer buys a 1 dollar phone card and
>> > use
>> > > it to dial a USA number, the call should lasts for 60 seconds.
>> > Asterisk
>> > > is doing a great job finishing the call exactly at 60 seconds. The
>> > > problem is that the telecom company billing system adds a two second
>> > > delay for each call, so the bill is not for 1 but 2 minutes (they
>> > round
>> > > fractions up).
>> > >
>> > > We're loosing money and the local telecom doesn't seem to have a
>> > > solution for this matter.
>> > >
>> > > Have you experienced something similar? Do you have any idea of how
>> > can
>> > > we solve this? Is it possible to configure Asterisk so that the 
>> system
>> > > thinks that a minute has 58 seconds instead of 60?
>> > >
>> > > _________________________________________________________________
>> > > MSN Amor: busca tu ½ naranja http://latam.msn.com/amor/
>>
>