Cc: <nanog@nanog.org> Subject: Re: New N.Y. Law Targets Hidden Net LD Tolls Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2005 12:53:43 -0500 Thus spake "Robert Bonomi" <bonomi@mail.r-bonomi.com>
*NOT* "other people's fraud". Just when you have 'intra-LATA' toll charges for some numbers within a single area-code. If the user is on one side of the area-code, and the provider's POP is on the far side of it, you can have a what appears to be a 'local' number, that does incur non-trivial per-minute charges. Without knowing _where_ a particular prefix is, you can't tell whether there will be toll charges for that call, or not, from any given call origin.
That's why some states (e.g. Texas) require that all toll calls be dialed as 1+ _regardless of area code_, and local calls cannot be dialed as 1+. If you dial a number wrong, you get a message telling you how to do it properly (and why).
In some places that "solution" is _not_practical_. As in where the same three digit sequence is in use as a C.O. 'prefix', *and* as an areacode. (an where, in some 'perverse' situations, the foreign area-code is a 'non-toll' call, yet the bare prefix within the areacode is a toll call. It also becomes 'utterly meaningless', when _all_ calls incur a usage ("message units" or something similar) charge.