Re: New N.Y. Law Targets Hidden Net LD Tolls
From owner-nanog@merit.edu Thu Aug 18 11:04:41 2005 Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2005 07:56:10 -0700 (PDT) From: David Barak <thegameiam@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: New N.Y. Law Targets Hidden Net LD Tolls To: Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com>, nanog@merit.edu
--- Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com> wrote:
I assume the NY AG will also be targeting enforcement of Domino's Pizza because they have lots of phone numbers and consumers may unknowingly dial a phone number to order a pizza which may be a toll call in their area.
A typical call to Domino's lasts < 2 minutes, and if it's not actually a local call, you're almost certainly not in the delivery area (and would get redirected to the correct store). Accidentally dialing a nonlocal Domino's results in a $.10 bill (and no pizza).
A typical call to a dial-up ISP is what, a few hours? Multiple times per month? Accidentally using a non-local ISP number can result in a bill in the hundreds of dollars pretty easily (also no pizza).
All true, but *WHY* is that 'accidentally dialing a non-local ISP number' the *ISP's* fault??
--- Robert Bonomi <bonomi@mail.r-bonomi.com> wrote:
A typical call to a dial-up ISP is what, a few hours? Multiple times per month? Accidentally using a non-local ISP number can result in a bill in the hundreds of dollars pretty easily (also no pizza).
All true, but *WHY* is that 'accidentally dialing a non-local ISP number' the *ISP's* fault??
Who said anything about fault? This is merely a recognition on the part of Government that consumers might make a costly mistake. The Government decided to tell ISPs to give the consumers an extra notice to try to prevent that. Not unreasonable at all (although personally, I like the TX-style "all your long distance are 11D, else 10D" approach). Simple consumer protection, similar to the <offtopic warning!> requirement to publish both per item and per measured unit pricing on foodstuffs...< /offtopic> -David David Barak Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise: http://www.listentothefranchise.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
Speaking on Deep Background, the Press Secretary whispered:
Not unreasonable at all (although personally, I like the TX-style "all your long distance are 11D, else 10D" approach). Simple consumer protection, similar to the <offtopic warning!>
Ahem; MD has to me the most viable approach: type: local toll 7D NFG NFG 10D OK NFG 11D OK OK where the defn of toll is "by the minute". Face it, 7D is dead; and even if overlays had not arrived, cell phones would have killed it. Once you learn to think 10D, it's trivial. But there are some people who are too stubborn and pigheaded^Y^Y^Y feel differently about this issue... That said; this is getting OT for NANOG.. -- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433
Face it, 7D is dead; and even if overlays had not arrived, cell phones would have killed it. Once you learn to think 10D, it's trivial.
Oh, you ignorant rednecks.* Even my cell phone has 7D dialing and it'll be a century before overlays arrive where I live. The reason that it makes sense for an ISP to warn its customers about surprise toll calls is that toll rates have gotten so low that for the most part, we don't worry about them. Due to the peculiar telegeography in my area, a 7D call within my area code could be local, intra-LATA toll, or inter-LATA toll. But the most expensive of those is 8 cents/min so for voice calls, I don't care, and I really appreciate not having the insane Texas plan where you have to memorize every single local prefix to be able to make a fripping phone call. Since ISP calls are long, even low toll rates add up, and that makes them unusual enough to be worth warning people. I really have to put some of the blame on telcos here. Every prefix in the country is assigned to a rate center, every phone has a set of rate centers that are local, and it's not rocket science to do the cross-product and tell people what numbers are local to them. CLEC or ILEC doesn't matter, nor does the location of the switch. I realize there are a few wacky prefixes that are local to the whole LATA, but they seem to be getting less common rather than more, and there's few enough of them to special case. R's, John * - from small towns along the MD/VA border that combine northern charm with southern efficiency
In message <20050819163708.26103.qmail@xuxa.iecc.com>, John Levine writes:
Face it, 7D is dead; and even if overlays had not arrived, cell phones would have killed it. Once you learn to think 10D, it's trivial.
Oh, you ignorant rednecks.* Even my cell phone has 7D dialing
Mine doesn't -- AT&T Wireless and Cingular GSM phones have 10D or 11D only, at least around here. --Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
Thus spake "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
In message <20050819163708.26103.qmail@xuxa.iecc.com>, John Levine writes:
Oh, you ignorant rednecks.* Even my cell phone has 7D dialing
Mine doesn't -- AT&T Wireless and Cingular GSM phones have 10D or 11D only, at least around here.
My T-Mobile GSM phone allows 10D, 11D, or E.164 anywhere in the US and Canada, but I've noticed I can dial 7D in most places that have a single area code. S Stephen Sprunk "Those people who think they know everything CCIE #3723 are a great annoyance to those of us who do." K5SSS --Isaac Asimov
On Fri, 19 Aug 2005, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
Mine doesn't -- AT&T Wireless and Cingular GSM phones have 10D or 11D only, at least around here.
Leave it up to Cingular to be stupid. :P I've been a customer of Alltel, Northcoast PCS, Sprint PCS and now T-Mobile, and the old GTE Wireless dating back to '93. On none of those carriers have I ever been forced to dial 10D if I wasn't roaming, and if I was dialing a number in the same area code my cellphone number was in. IOW, I'm pretty sure they're the only company doing that, though ICBW. -- Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED Company website: http://JustThe.net/ Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/ E: sjsobol@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307
On Fri, Aug 19, 2005 at 03:15:11PM -0400, Steven J. Sobol wrote:
On Fri, 19 Aug 2005, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
Mine doesn't -- AT&T Wireless and Cingular GSM phones have 10D or 11D only, at least around here.
Leave it up to Cingular to be stupid. :P I've been a customer of Alltel, Northcoast PCS, Sprint PCS and now T-Mobile, and the old GTE Wireless dating back to '93. On none of those carriers have I ever been forced to dial 10D if I wasn't roaming, and if I was dialing a number in the same area code my cellphone number was in.
IOW, I'm pretty sure they're the only company doing that, though ICBW.
I hang out in telecom circles, and I have no datapoints suggesting that cellular carriers are requiring or moving to requiring 10D for local calling, though Stan Cline (roamer1) would be the guy to ask. This is, of course, OT of the OT thread about ISP dialing. I would observe that there's a fairly obvious mnemonic to 7D (the same area code as my own number), but Steve's already gonna yell at me for posting on this thread, so... Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Designer +-Internetworking------+----------+ RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates | Best Practices Wiki | | '87 e24 St Petersburg FL USA http://bestpractices.wikicities.com +1 727 647 1274 If you can read this... thank a system administrator. Or two. --me
John Levine wrote:
Face it, 7D is dead; and even if overlays had not arrived, cell phones would have killed it. Once you learn to think 10D, it's trivial.
Oh, you ignorant rednecks.* Even my cell phone has 7D dialing and it'll be a century before overlays arrive where I live.
The reason that it makes sense for an ISP to warn its customers about surprise toll calls is that toll rates have gotten so low that for the most part, we don't worry about them. Due to the peculiar telegeography in my area, a 7D call within my area code could be local, intra-LATA toll, or inter-LATA toll. But the most expensive of those is 8 cents/min so for voice calls, I don't care, and I really
Duh. I pay less for an international trans-atlantic call for premium voice minutes in retail (US$0.04/minute). Wholesale I get the same minute for less than 2 cents (US$). A 64kbit/s transparent ISDN call on the same path costs 3 cents (US$). And I'm in Switzerland. So it seems to be cheaper for me to call you than it is for you to call someone in the next LATA. -- Andre
On Fri, Aug 19, 2005 at 07:29:44PM +0200, Andre Oppermann wrote:
John Levine wrote:
Face it, 7D is dead; and even if overlays had not arrived, cell phones would have killed it. Once you learn to think 10D, it's trivial.
Oh, you ignorant rednecks.* Even my cell phone has 7D dialing and it'll be a century before overlays arrive where I live.
The reason that it makes sense for an ISP to warn its customers about surprise toll calls is that toll rates have gotten so low that for the most part, we don't worry about them. Due to the peculiar telegeography in my area, a 7D call within my area code could be local, intra-LATA toll, or inter-LATA toll. But the most expensive of those is 8 cents/min so for voice calls, I don't care, and I really
Duh. I pay less for an international trans-atlantic call for premium voice minutes in retail (US$0.04/minute). Wholesale I get the same minute for less than 2 cents (US$). A 64kbit/s transparent ISDN call on the same path costs 3 cents (US$). And I'm in Switzerland. So it seems to be cheaper for me to call you than it is for you to call someone in the next LATA.
And people wonder why the ILECs are sitting on fat wads of cash? I can get US48 LD for $.02/min. I've found it cheaper sending calls this way then paying for an unlimited plan. Most people in the US can get unlimited LD plans on their POTS service for around $60/mo (with most taxes, etc... included). Regular POTS service can be had for around $14/mo (no frills, no dtmf, etc..) around here at the most cut rate discount plans. When i cancelled my Vonage service, they were willing to to offer me service for $5 or $6/mo to keep me as a customer. I've found that connecting directly to the PSTN via POTS to be quite expensive compared to most of the alternatives out there, I think it's only a matter of time before one of the ILECS (probally one of the non-major CO-OPs or consortiums) switches over to unlimited domestic plans to capture the LD, as most people don't use enough on an unlimited plan to justify it. - jared -- Jared Mauch | pgp key available via finger from jared@puck.nether.net clue++; | http://puck.nether.net/~jared/ My statements are only mine.
Thus spake "John Levine" <johnl@iecc.com>
Face it, 7D is dead; and even if overlays had not arrived, cell phones would have killed it. Once you learn to think 10D, it's trivial.
Oh, you ignorant rednecks.* Even my cell phone has 7D dialing and it'll be a century before overlays arrive where I live.
Great. Store 7D numbers in your phone's directory and drive a few hours in any direction; see if they still work. _That_ is why mobile phones are killing off 7D, not because of dialing patterns or overlays.
I really appreciate not having the insane Texas plan where you have to memorize every single local prefix to be able to make a fripping phone call.
When you have seven nearby area codes (like I do), and parts of each of them can be local or toll, there's no hope of memorizing prefixes. You guess based on the distance, and you either get through or a recording tells you that you guessed wrong. If you thought a number was local and it turns out to be toll, that may make you think twice about whether you need to find a closer number or perhaps not talk as long. I find it to be nuts that some places have 7D toll calls and 11D local calls; how can you have any clue what (if anything) you're paying without calling the operator? Back before CLECs, SWB's phone books had a map with the prefixes assigned to each exchange and rules to determine if a call was local or toll. Now, with ten times as many prefixes per exchange (and several possible area codes for each) and new prefixes being added every week, that's simply not practical anymore. S Stephen Sprunk "Those people who think they know everything CCIE #3723 are a great annoyance to those of us who do." K5SSS --Isaac Asimov
On Fri, Aug 19, 2005 at 01:59:46PM -0500, Stephen Sprunk wrote:
Thus spake "John Levine" <johnl@iecc.com>
Face it, 7D is dead; and even if overlays had not arrived, cell phones would have killed it. Once you learn to think 10D, it's trivial.
Oh, you ignorant rednecks.* Even my cell phone has 7D dialing and it'll be a century before overlays arrive where I live.
Great. Store 7D numbers in your phone's directory and drive a few hours in any direction; see if they still work. _That_ is why mobile phones are killing off 7D, not because of dialing patterns or overlays.
humm.... there are 7d #'s in my cell and some 3d #'s also. and some 14d and lots of 10d numbers. regardless, when i drive a few hours -WEST- (that would be 140-200 mile off the LA coast...), none of them work... unless i carry a micro/pico cell and sat uplink w/ me... (yes the car needs a hull and a powerplant from a Cigarette). GSM is such a PITA. And only a few locations I am aware of (Parts of the Gulf of Mexico) have any cell coverage more than a mile or two offshore w/o adjunct support (see above) --bill
Stephen Sprunk "Those people who think they know everything CCIE #3723 are a great annoyance to those of us who do." K5SSS --Isaac Asimov
We used to refer to 10 digit dialing as 17 digit dialing cuz you'd dial 7 then realize oops flash and dial 10. Since this is almost ubiquitous one wonders why no one* sells a phone with a big red DIAL LOCAL AREA CODE button you can set up? I realize us nerds can manage to set up speed dial features to do this (actually I have almost zero patience for diddling with such things personally) but c'mon you want the big red clown nose to push, (PFX) NPAXXXX, it could even act as another "ON" button (you usually have to push something to get a dial tone on most modern phones, particularly cordless.) What was the question again? * Well how can I say with authority "no one" but I've never seen this. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD The World | Public Access Internet | Since 1989 *oo*
On Fri, Aug 19, 2005 at 07:37:37PM -0400, Barry Shein wrote:
We used to refer to 10 digit dialing as 17 digit dialing cuz you'd dial 7 then realize oops flash and dial 10.
Q: But how will I remember all those numbers? A: Well, scientists have discovered that even monkeys can memorize ten numbers. Are you stupider than a monkey? - Simpsons If that doesn't summarize this argument, and this thread, I don't know what will. -- Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)
On Fri, 19 Aug 2005, Stephen Sprunk wrote:
When you have seven nearby area codes (like I do), and parts of each of them can be local or toll, there's no hope of memorizing prefixes. You guess based on the distance, and you either get through or a recording tells you that you guessed wrong.
Here in Atlanta, the local calling area is a huge ellipse-like shape with a wide radius of something like 100 miles, entirely containing four NPAs (404, 678, 770, and the inactive[*] 470), and with access to edge-touching prefixes in three others (256, 478, and 706). 10D dialing for local calls has been around for some time, and is standardized to the point of locals regularly using shorthand for NPA (4/XXX-XXXX is 404; 7/XXX-XXXX is 770). 1+10D is always used for toll calls, and you get an intercept recording if you guessed wrong about the leading 1. (Ref: http://members.dandy.net/~czg/lca_exch.php?exch=032460 ) I've found the overlay scheme to be so much more straightforward; 10D numbers are constant length and proper detection about use of leading 1 keeps unintended tolls out of the way.
I find it to be nuts that some places have 7D toll calls and 11D local calls; how can you have any clue what (if anything) you're paying without calling the operator?
You don't easily. And the worst part is, the dialing pattern varies even more wildly throughout the US. NANPA keeps a record of these patterns: http://www.nanpa.com/npa/allnpas.zip (*cough* Access database with comprehensive info) http://www.nanpa.com/nas/public/npasRequiring10DigitReport.do?method=display... (NPAs requiring 10D local dialing, with appreviated details) -- -- Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org> <tv@pobox.com> <todd@vierling.name>
On Thu, 18 Aug 2005 13:47:11 CDT, Robert Bonomi said:
All true, but *WHY* is that 'accidentally dialing a non-local ISP number' the *ISP's* fault??
Because the ISP gave the number to the user, often accompanied by text that implied that the number provided was an economical way to get connected. "Here's a list of our local numbers:" "Here's a list of our numbers in your area code. Some numbers may be toll calls from some locations in the area code, please double-check." As far as I can tell, they're requiring the second rather than the first. Move along, nothing to see... ;)
participants (15)
-
Andre Oppermann -
Barry Shein -
bmanning＠vacation.karoshi.com -
David Barak -
David Lesher -
Jared Mauch -
Jay R. Ashworth -
John Levine -
Richard A Steenbergen -
Robert Bonomi -
Stephen Sprunk -
Steven J. Sobol -
Steven M. Bellovin -
Todd Vierling -
Valdis.Kletnieks＠vt.edu