On Sat, 2009-08-15 at 22:43 -0700, Nitzan Kon wrote: > > 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. > > Well, what we did is target and exclude some conference > services from our free-calling plans. If users want to > use those "for free" they should be the ones paying for it.
real carriers cant do that. Real carriers that are licensed by the FCC specifically are banned from that action (FCC court cases over conferences specifically). I think its shady for you to sell a 'free calling plan' but not actually provide 'free calling' unless you specifically and openly say that its a free calling plan but certain numbers are blacklisted because you dont like that traffic. I do not know the details of your plan so I cant say either way which one of these you are doing. > When I price a calling plan, I account for the majority > of the calls. The majority of calls cost a fraction of > a cent. When so-called "free" conference services cost > 10 times that and artificially inflate the average per > minute price - I don't see why I should raise my prices > to match. I dont see why you should ever complain about losing money when you offer a service and someone happens to use it. If you read the FCC case it states that carriers should put ratios and similar things in their contracts instead of what AT&T did (who lost in the previously mentioned case) and shut off service because it was not what they expected it to be. If you advertise a price and a product, that product should be delivered for that price. I really blame shady business people for things like "unlimited calling" when it really is not unlimited and they never intended for it to be unlimited. Look at Skype for example, they say unlimited but their TOS says 10,000 minutes, and they have shut people off after 3000 minutes if they didnt like the traffic. This is basically a bait and switch scam in my opinion, tricking users into thinking they are going to get something and then delivering something else. > I'd rather just ban or exclude those services > from the calling plan. It doesn't make sense for the > user too - why would they want their calling plan to > double in price? > As long as you clearly and openly say this up front before they pay any money I see no problem with it. However if its buried in the TOS through obscure language, or worse unstated or in such vague terms that its really unclear what it means then the user really isnt making an informed choice are they? Again I dont know which you do, so I cant comment on your service specifically. > You're biased because you operate such a service, and I > agree that it's LEGAL - but dealing with it is a PITA > for carriers. > its only a PITA if you try to lie to your customers and tell them its unlimited when it really isnt, or tell them they can call numbers they really cant. If things are priced fairly and what they cost then its never a problem. It sure would be great if I could get people to pay me money and never use my service, and this seems to be the business model that many VoIP companies want to operate under. Offer unlimited service and then freak out that someone thought the term "unlimited" means "without limits". Offer flat rate service with 0 ratios and find out that users are LCRing traffic that is all high cost (that shut down many ITSPs a couple years ago). I understand the marketing concerns of users wanting a simple billing package, and the cost concerns of some billing packages. I have no problem with limits so long as they are openly and clearly disclosed. I actually want to see the FTC ban all the uses of the word "unlimited" when it really isnt. > > or under-pricing minutes and then complaining that people > > actually used the service. > > So basically, we all should triple our rates, just so a > few rural chat lines can keep their profit stream? I don't > think so. no that is not the only option. That is certainly one option. Ratios is another option, one that was mentioned by the FCC (albeit tacitly since the lack of ratio adherence is what caused AT&T to freak out) in the case I was specifically talking about in that partially quoted section. Others include minute caps (magicjack says 20 times the average users volume, but its hard to know what the average users volume is - reports put it at about 104 minutes a month) although I would think that those caps should be disclosed. Skype for example says 10,000 minutes, AT&T Callvantage originally said 5,000 minutes (I dont think they do anymore). Broadvoice forces you into a higher rate plan saying its "business traffic" if there is an appreciable amount of minutes. The other aspect of this is companies like Tmobile will give you unlimited, and they mean unlimited. Boost mobile does too. You can call 24/7 and they do not say anything. What they do is price it out so that they make a lot of money on some customers, lose money on others, and at the end it all balances out. This is only a suitable model if you have a large customer base to spread the costs out (its highly similar to the insurance model). I am sure there are other options as well. -- 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