From owner-nanog@merit.edu Fri Aug 19 14:37:28 2005 From: Barry Shein <bzs@world.std.com> Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2005 15:31:42 -0400 To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: New N.Y. Law Targets Hidden Net LD Tolls

Can't one still get minimal phone service which charges a toll on every phone call? I know this used to cost like $5/mo but I think they eliminated it in MA a few years ago, or made it hardship-only.

Authoritative answer: "Maybe." Depends on the locale, the state regulators, and the phone company. Frequently called "Lifeline" service, when marketed for the elderly, disabled, etc. Also called "measured zero" -- when offered to the general public (for the 'cheap SOB' customer)

Simple business lines here normally charge for every phone call, 1MB as they're called, MB = Measured Business tho I guess that's not what Spitzer was concerned with.

But that's a big part of the problem, the telcos don't make this information readily available in a form ISPs can use, and even if they did it'd depend on the specific service option the customer had. In our experience customers don't generally know what phone service they have in any useful way (such as the exact name the telco calls it, circle dialing, metro calling, etc.)

I've had an ILEC refuse to tell me (a CLEC customer) where _their_ "rate center" for my numbers was. That it was 'proprietary' information that they would not release to non-customers. Never mind the fact that the reason I wanted it, was to give it to those of *their* customers who were, incidentally, also my customers.

And boy howdy we've tried to help, motivated by the occasional livid customer who got an unexpectedly large bill. We've had a warning just like the one suggested on our pick a number since before some list members here were born.

It *is* definitely 'good business practice' to supply such advice to "double check" the suggested number. I question the _requirement_ -- and penalties for failure -- to do so. The area transit authority publishes a _single_ 7-digit number that you can call from anywere in the 6 NPA region they service to get travel information. For large portions of the territory dialing that 'same NPA' number results in a pricey INTRA-LATA toll call. For a differently- delimited large area, dialing a different NPA, and then that 7-digits gets you a much _less_expensive_ call to an apparent destination that is (apparently, based on the rates) much 'closer to home'. Why isn't the gov't requiring *them* to run a similar disclaimer -- and with severe penalties for non-compliance -- on all their materials listing that number?

In my not insignificant experience there's some VP inside every RBOC cackling madly over the revenues generated by this confusion.

And, no, don't give me the old "don't attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity."

It is *definitely* not stupidity. In the case mentioned above, the ILEC was handing calls off to the CLEC at points away from where the 'nearest' ILEC-CLEC inter-connect to the CLEC POP was. Calls to lines that were only a few dozens of numbers apart were being routed through _different_ tie-points, with *different* costs to the caller.

Double-digit billion $$ companies don't make universal, big revenue generating mistakes over a period of probably 50 years with no doubt millions of complaints (not just ISP dialing) out of "stupidity".

Such confusion is their stock in trade.

And I suspect that's, as Paul Harvey used to say, "The rest of the story". Spitzer's office must have tried to look into why ISPs et al can't just make a reasonably accurate suggestion to customers looking for a phone number and, upon querying the telcos, was met with a big: hahahahahahaha yeah, right!

It's too obvious to have possibly been missed.

-- -Barry Shein

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