Hey Trixter, Can you explain a bit more about the "early media" adverts and why there aren't any per minute charges?
Thanks, Igor H. Trixter aka Bret McDanel wrote: > On Fri, 2008-08-01 at 12:38 -0400, Richard Siddall wrote: >> I was basing it on some of the explanatory pages on the FCC site, not >> the underlying orders. (Of course, when I did a web search to try to >> find a reference to reply to Steve, I couldn't find the pages.) >> >> I'm 99.9% sure a couple of months back I saw a PDF on the FCC site that >> used the term "speculation" when talking about toll-free numbers, but it >> doesn't show up in Google now. >> > > Ok, then its likely that what I found was it, because I googled with > 'speculation' as well, since that was the term that you provided. To > answer someone elses email, yes its almost identical to domain > squatting, and in some cases it has painful responses. There are some > who like the domain squatters will query SMS/800 for recently available > numbers, and will yank them asap. In one case a rape crisis hotline was > shut down, a week later it was a porn line, not good for those calling. > > Basically the FCC feared that people would get good tollfrees, those > that spell something, or all 0' or ... "cherry numbers" and would start > inflating the prices of them, just as domain names have been done, and > selling them off. They do not want the numbers themselves to be a > commodity traded that way, basically company X needs to sell all their > tollfrees for the same price, and not charge a premium for '800' where > '888/77/66/55' are discounted, if they get 800-something that is salable > as the name they shouldnt do that as well. > > To get around this 2 main methods have been done it seems. There are > probably others, but ... A combo package of the telephone number, > domain name that matches, and all that are sold. In this way the phone > number is not sold at a premium, the extra money comes from the matching > domain name, and all that. The other way is to form 2 companies, one > that only does the "cherry numbers" and all of them are highly priced. > This way is a bit more sketchy. Come to think about it I havent seen > either of these two advertised in 3 or so years, so maybe there was a > crackdown against it. It used to be regularly that I would see this. > > Of course this does not stop a canadian company from doing the same > thing, after all the tollfree pool is the same between countries, more > or less, and the FCC can only make US based orders. > > >> I was looking into this as our original toll-free number started getting >> a lot of calls for a long distance phone card provider with a different >> toll-free prefix. > > HA what a place to do a "early media" advert for services. Early media > means no answering supervision so no per minute charges (why american > idol vote lines operate that way). You can then advertise better rates > or whatever and capture some customers. Its their fault for calling the > "advert line" instead of the number they wanted :) > > _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- AstriCon 2008 - September 22 - 25 Phoenix, Arizona Register Now: http://www.astricon.net asterisk-biz mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz