I'm sure the phone guys will elaborate, but I believe traffic pumping was legal
at first and became illegal when people started doing it intentionally to
exploit the rules. Whether it's illegal in any given situation (I believe)
comes down to intent. Is your customer service center in a rural iLEC
territory because that's where your business HQ is? That should be fine. Is
your customer service center there because the rural iLEC enticed you there to
get the traffic? That's bad.
Long voicemails full of silence I'd suggest one of two things:
*
A technical issue on the carrier side with calls not ending when they're
supposed to
*
(In the 90's I worked for a company that had a $32,000 phone call to Europe
because a switch malfunction held a line open for several days)
*
A malfunctioning robocaller system. Maybe if a human answered they'd hear the
Chinese lady talking about their DHL package.
I suppose alternatives could be someone intentionally trying to give them a
huge phone bill, or an issue with IVR programming, like a call that's supposed
to be terminated is bridged to a voicemail box or something.
-Adam
________________________________
From: AF <[email protected]> on behalf of Ken Hohhof <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, August 29, 2025 12:35 PM
To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' <[email protected]>
Subject: [AFMUG] traffic pumping schemes
I seem to remember news from states including Utah awhile back where small
local LECs were striking revenue sharing agreements with operators of sex chat
lines and the like to pump traffic that the LEC would charge a big long
distance company for completing. The more traffic they pumped to these
numbers, the more they profited. I don’t remember the details, and I think
whether it was illegal or contrary to FCC rules was in dispute.
So I have a VoIP customer who started getting ridiculous bills for their toll
free number. (We provide their local service but a third party Lingo redirects
their 800 number.) The customer thinks it was connected to a rise in off hours
max length voicemails, although I question if the math works out to the huge
amounts they were being billed by Lingo.
We reduced the max voicemail length from 15 minutes to 5, and they think
whoever was leaving the long messages gave up.
Does this make any sense? Why would they target a toll free number
specifically? And I thought they made money for terminating the call, not
originating it. And would they actually notice that VMs are now being cut off
earlier and stop calling?
This customer also had 2 or 3 toll free number on their bill that are not
theirs. For example 800-557-4273. I called this number and it’s a recorded
message with a scam for a $100 gift card or something like that in return for a
$1.99 credit card purchase, that’s apparently a known scam going back many
years. These TF calls are NOT going to this customer’s local DID. Could that
be a traffic pumping scheme, could the mystery TF number be redirecting to
local DIDs with the calls terminated by a small rural LEC?
I could be barking up the wrong tree and this has nothing to do with traffic
pumping, maybe Lingo is just overcharging them. But nobody seems to be able to
explain why they started getting these max length overnight VMs of just
background noise. I did tell them that a TF number, especially since that’s
what they have on their website and Facebook page, is like a blank check, you
will pay by the minute for anyone who wants to call your number.
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