On Sun, 2009-08-16 at 00:42 -0400, Peter Beckman wrote: > On Sun, 16 Aug 2009, [email protected] wrote: > > > Some examples of ridiculous, frivolous and destructive arbitrage > > opportunities? > > Let's not forget the whole Free Conference Calling Scheme using Iowa LECs > to get paid a lot of money just to take calls:
well in all fairness, the way its set up in most places where calls are handed from company to company, money changes hands. This is because if I place a call from provider X to provider Y, only provider X can bill me (my local carrier), yet provider Y's network was used. This is similar to how internet peering fees are done except its based on bytes and not minutes. In the US you have a local carrier, long distance carrier if it crosses latas, and the remote ends local carrier. For a long distance call only the long distance company can bill you. The long distance company should not be able to profit off the networks of the local exchange carriers. In europe you will see that this type of system still exists when a call goes from one carrier to the other. The difference is that they generally do not sell calls for less than their cost (according to the FCC its on the carriers in the US to bill their costs and not cry about losing money). So when you call from a landline to a mobile, you will see a higher cost. Part of that cost goes to the mobile carrier, which generally has inflated termination rates anyway. Money is still changing hands in a similar way to the way it does in the US. I for example can get Dutch DIDs for compensation, and BT sells UK ones and Eircom sells Irish ones for compensation as well. I am not talking about premium numbers, I am talking about regular geographic numbers. Odds are everywhere stanaphone exists they are getting compensated and why they give out free DIDs all over. I dont know which providers they use, I really havent looked into who is doing it and who isnt, I only know of a few carriers personally that do this. -- Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com Bret McDanel pgp key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x8AE5C721 _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- AstriCon 2009 - October 13 - 15 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
