On Tue, 2008-03-25 at 16:35 +0000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Google: eric brown clec click on ADT letter or Clec report and see some of > the things going on with individuals in the business.
It was ADT that I had heard of and some plan he had, which seemed to rely upon carriers less than robust billing systems for flat rate tollfree service that I had seen in the past. Basically what he was advertising was a very cheap flat rate almost unlimited channel tollfree line, based around the fact that many CLECs do not bill for certain charges they could. So in each of the 209 LATAs you arrange to have a CLEC there be responsible for the tollfree, which gives you effectively a free one. The whole thing seemed dodgy to me, why I never did it, because they dont bill today but nothing stops them from billing tomorrow and you could have built a business on that and end up paying a ton in unplanned expenses for calls. If a carrier does not want to bill for certain things that is their choice, and I have no problem using their service, even if its at a loss to that carrier. Companies often sell products below cost as a loss leader. In my past I did not have a problem buying mp3 players below cost and selling them on ebay, I see the two as the same. Phone minutes are a commodity the same as real products, other than for a carrier its use it or lose it, unused capacity is in essence wasted and to recapture some of that by wholesaling minutes below cost, still provides income to the company. A loss of $500 is not as bad as a loss of $1000 ... Its when you dont have a contracted price that causes problems for me because of the potential for a surprise bill that would mean filing bankruptcy if it happened in many places at the same time. Yes its not difficult to either be a resporg or hire a 3rd party resporg and insert routing data that would make calls go over a carrier they ordinarily wouldnt go over, and that carrier may not know that its tollfree traffic so they may not bill for it. I do not know if Eric Brown/ADT did this without the knowledge of the carriers, or if the tollfree traffic was agreed upon, I never got far enough in the discussions to tell. I do know for example that XO years ago had a problem where they couldnt tell it was a tollfree if you use a 3rd party resporg and route it to one of their DIDs. They would then bill you as if its a normal inbound phone call. This demonstrates that its not only small carriers that may have this weakness. However to take advantage of this is a gamble, as they may detect it and back bill for the traffic or it may be illegal (I can see a fairly well formed argument for toll fraud in this situation since you are avoiding fees you would otherwise have to pay, which is the tariff definition of toll fraud in most tariffs, and generally in the law). It seems however that ADT had other issues as well based on what I read. And while I did not click on every link, this particular sales item did not seem to be mentioned, although it was advertised on this list a few years ago. -- Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com Bret McDanel Belfast +44 28 9099 6461 US +1 516 687 5200 http://www.trxtel.com the phone company that pays you! _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-biz mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz
