On Sat, 2009-08-15 at 21:38 -0700, Nitzan Kon wrote: > We've seen the opposite lately- some toll free numbers would > not answer the call, and instead play their IVR and let the > user navigate the IVR for a few minutes without actually > answering the call, so in essence they do not get billed > for that time. Not sure if this is illegal/against regulations > but it definitely should be above a certain limit. i.e. > playing a "the number is unreachable, press X to page this > person" in early media is FINE - but letting the user go > through several minutes of IVR options in early media seems > like abuse to me. >
some airlines have deals where they only answer when you transfer to a live agent. I know that some carriers do not like early media for bi-directional communication. Meteor mobile in IE gives you 60 seconds, and listen only, you cant send dtmf, you cant speak, but you can hear. At least for calls to the US. This at least lets you hear a status message free. American Idol does their voting, or at least did, with early media only to avoid the MOU charges. > As far as arbitrage goes - there's plenty of examples to > go around: and arbitrage is *NOT* illegal, in fact the FCC said that its legal in Audiotext v AT&T (para 35). They said its on the carriers to charge what it costs and not whine because they sold service for below their cost and lost money. Their contracts and tariffs need to include protections against losing money. All of the complaints about arbitrage is that its unfair that some company can advertise a rate below their cost and they end up losing money over it. Well ya know I sold mp3 players on ebay once, and I bought them from Best Buy which was selling them below their cost (confirmed by the manufacturer of the mp3 player). No one knows why they were below cost, but they were. I bought low and sold high. Best Buy never whined about losing money. Arbitrage would be gone if telcos charged what it cost and not below that. Arguments that arbitrage is wrong because it preys on those nice fair honest telcos seem a bit dubious. I see it as somewhat dishonest for companies to advertise unlimited and put in their TOS "yeah there are limits but we wont tell you what they are" or under-pricing minutes and then complaining that people actually used the service. -- 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