[Dundi] Question on GPA: Toll Services clause vs. ITSPs

[John Todd]

At 8:09 PM -0500 on 10/23/04, Mark Spencer wrote:
>>"6. TOLL SERVICES. No Participant may provide Routes for any Services
>>that require payment from the calling party or their customer for
>>communication with the Service. Nothing in this section shall prohibit
>>a Participant from providing routes for Services where the calling party
>>may later enter into a financial transaction with the called party
>>(e.g., a Participant may provide Routes for calling cards services)."
>
>>This would more or less prohibit any commercial service provider 
>>from using DUNDi, but I perhaps am mis-reading the legal meaning.
>
>Yes, you are missing some subtlty here...  Please excuse the double 
>negatives in advance.
>
>No participant may provide *Routes* for any Services that require 
>payment from the calling party or their customer for communication 
>with the service.  It does *not* say you may not charge your own 
>customer to connect them to the destination Route that you get back, 
>and it does *not* say you cannot charge a customer to represent them 
>within the destination.
>
>Mark

OK, that's subtle in the extreme.

Let me illustrate a common (currently hypothetical) situation where 
this subtle difference blurs:

Let's take a network where there are two DUNDi announcers, both 
service providers.  Each provider only allows paid customers to 
attach to their Asterisk systems, for various routing and termination 
products.  Let's say it's a $10 a month charge that each of them 
charges just for the right to use the servicem, but all calls are 
included in that price.

Provider A hears a route from Provider B.  Customer A1 on Provider A 
sends a call to an endpoint on Provider B.  Provider B terminates the 
call on Customer B1's phone device.

Now, looking at this from one perspective, it's easy to see that 
Provider B charged a price for the call, even if we just divide the 
$10 out by the number of calls in a payment period.  There is clearly 
a price to Customer B1 for that call.  There is also a price for 
Customer A1, since they too are paying a price to use the routes, 
even if it's not associated directly with a per-call or per-minute 
rate.  By the GPA's current wording, this is not allowed.

The distinction between "Route" and "Service" is almost invisible.  A 
"route" can be a yes-or-no answer, relayed through SIP or IAX or 
whatever.  I think that if the word "provide" was changed to 
"propagate" in the first sentence, that would solve the issue, as it 
makes it a much more explicit definition.

JT