Was not illegal. The tariffs were FCC approved. We had customers that ran conference bridges in our area. The few times I dialed into the conference bridges were were groups talking about things like shade tree mechanics would discuss or how to upgrade computers. There was most likely sex chat there too. But there was never any illegal activity at all. Initially everyone was making money, then the inter exchange carrers like Sprint and AT&T went from toll charges that were distance based to geographic rate averaging, so they could be in a net zero revenue situation on calls to our areas. Then as further competition heated up they all went flat rate all you can eat toll. They were certainly losing money on all traffic into our area and they started complaining to the FCC. But toll calls to rural areas are like toll roads where you record your own traffic and you self report. We only billed them for the calls they said they sent into our area.
Yes, the IXCs would have loved to have had a judge somewhere say we were doing something illegal. They coined terms like traffic pumping and access stimulation to allege nefarious activity, but hey, don't want to pay the toll, don't send the calls. Towards the end Sprint just refused to pay their access charges, so we routed all calls coming from the sprint network with a recording that told the caller the while they paid their bill, Sprint is not paying theirs. If you want your call to get through call the CEO of sprint and let him know. Then I gave out his number. In about one hour after starting this, my own FCC lawyer from Washington DC was calling me in a flop sweat. Lawyers always want everyone to play nice and not engage in self help. Ultimately the FCC did strike down some of the tariffs to the rurals that made this so lucrative, but I had the foresight to re-join, NECA the National Exchange Carrier Association, an outfit that also had its own FCC access tariffs. It would pool all the access revenue from the IXCs and redistribute it based on proven need. A kind of forced socialism. But NECA tariffs are viewed as fair by most. And all of the challenges stopped when I did that. It was sure good while it lasted. From: AF [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ken Hohhof Sent: Friday, August 29, 2025 10:36 AM 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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