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How Does FreeConferenceCall.com Make Money? (2012)

aaronparecki.com

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Re: How Does FreeConferenceCall.com Make Money? (2012)

#11

Post by StudentStuff »

bkyan wrote: post #3

Are these termination fees still in effect?

In some rural areas there are still extremely high ratecenters that are costly to call. Looking at a ratedeck, 1240655 (Maryland), most Montana numbers and especially the Northwestern Territories (up in Canada) are the costliest to call, ranging from a few cents a minute to tens of cents a minute. Most flat rate VOIP operators won't deliver calls to those numbers, and if they do, they'll close your account if you call there too often.

The FCC has been cracking down on Traffic Pumping (which is what FreeConferenceCall, AOL, NetZero, etc were all created to do) to these prefixes, along with fake ringing that companies including T-Mobile do to make it seem like the call is being connected to these high cost areas, meanwhile the person your calling doesn't ever receive the call (or it gets through after attempting to call for multiple minutes).

Re: How Does FreeConferenceCall.com Make Money? (2012)

#12

Post by lftl »

StudentStuff wrote: post #11
bkyan wrote: post #3

Are these termination fees still in effect?

In some rural areas there are still extremely high ratecenters that are costly to call. Looking at a ratedeck, 1240655 (Maryland), most Montana numbers and especially the Northwestern Territories (up in Canada) are the costliest to call, ranging from a few cents a minute to tens of cents a minute. Most flat rate VOIP operators won't deliver calls to those numbers, and if they do, they'll close your account if you cal…

> along with fake ringing that companies including T-Mobile do to make it seem like the call is being connected to these high cost areas, meanwhile the person your calling doesn't ever receive the call

Interestingly enough T-Mobile has started giving me a notice before calls to some of these providers saying that I'll be charged 1 cent a minute for the call.

Re: How Does FreeConferenceCall.com Make Money? (2012)

#15

Post by StudentStuff »

lftl wrote: post #12
StudentStuff wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some rural areas there are still extremely high ratecenters that are costly to call. Looking at a ratedeck, 1240655 (Maryland), most Montana numbers and especially the Northwestern Territories (up in Canada) are the costliest to call, ranging from a few cents a minute to tens of cents a minute. Most flat rate VOIP operators won't deliver calls to those numbers, and if they do, they'll close your account if you cal…

> along with fake ringing that companies including T-Mobile do to make it seem like the call is being connected to these high cost areas, meanwhile the person your calling doesn't ever receive the call Interestingly enough T-Mobile has started giving me a notice before calls to some of these providers saying that I'll be charged 1 cent a minute for the call.

T-Mobile claims they are only doing this on traffic pumped numbers that cost them significantly more than that to call, but from the little I've looked into it they're charging this fee on paid conference call numbers that cost $0.002/min to call in the ratedecks I've checked (after doing an LRN DIP of course).

I've reached out to T-Mobile's business team repeatedly on an account that I'm a POC on to get a full list of surcharged numbers, but they are unwilling to disclose this basic information. This kind of stuff is what keeps businesses on Sprint and Verizon, at least they know their NANPA calls will get delivered reliably without surprise surcharges!

Re: How Does FreeConferenceCall.com Make Money? (2012)

#16

Post by StudentStuff »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #13

Instead of price per minute why doesn't the government tax the big carriers and subsidize the rural ones at a fixed monthly amount?

The original goal of this interstate call pricing scheme was to help encourage universal POTS service through America without creating something like the Universal Service Fund, primarily leaving it to "free" enterprise to provide universal coverage, mainly through small, rural telco cooperatives in areas Ma Bell wouldn't service.

Eventually the USF was created to help the least connected areas that didn't have tons of urbanites calling to fund their local telco cooperative. Meanwhile, these interstate calling rates were layered with intrastate calling rates as the baby bells prepared for local loop unbundling, expecting competing telephone companies to mainly target consumers.

Instead, what happened is CLECs mainly focused on business, creating those classic 1000 free hour discs from AOL, NetZero and the like. This pissed the Regional Bell Companies (which were the fragments of Bell Systems) off quite a bit, and they've been pushing forward with bill and keep as much as they can ever since.

Bill and Keep is essentially we bill eachother, and its hopefully close enough to a wash that no checks need to be cut. Doesn't work out that way though when dealing with even the most benign of businesses as your primary customer, plumbers, pharmacies, medical practices and the like mainly take inbound calls.

Re: How Does FreeConferenceCall.com Make Money? (2012)

#17

Post by StudentStuff »

nwilkens wrote: post #14

A while back I stumbled upon an interesting issue with a hacked Asterisk server. It was routing calls to FreeConferenceCall.com and other free conference numbers. https://www.mnxsolutions.com/security/i-accidentally-recorde...

Toll fraud is quite common due to the VOIP industry not valuing security. Combined with free conference calling numbers costing a bit to call (and calls to these numbers lasting a fair while), I'm not surprised that most of the traffic was headed to these numbers.

Re: How Does FreeConferenceCall.com Make Money? (2012)

#18

Post by iends »

misterprime wrote: post #4

Clever, but it still sounds like it wouldn't add up to that much. They only make a small amount when it connects to a user connected through a small phone company right? Based on this description connecting someone on AT&T in NYC to Verizon in LA wouldn't result in any revenue.

I worked for a now defunct company that was making $7mm/year doing this. With only 4 people on payroll.

Re: How Does FreeConferenceCall.com Make Money? (2012)

#19

Post by nwilkens »

StudentStuff wrote: post #17
nwilkens wrote: post #14

A while back I stumbled upon an interesting issue with a hacked Asterisk server. It was routing calls to FreeConferenceCall.com and other free conference numbers. https://www.mnxsolutions.com/security/i-accidentally-recorde...

Toll fraud is quite common due to the VOIP industry not valuing security. Combined with free conference calling numbers costing a bit to call (and calls to these numbers lasting a fair while), I'm not surprised that most of the traffic was headed to these numbers.

Any idea how this Asterisk server would have been added as a route?

These callers that were recorded, were not the ones trying to leverage the hacked server, but rather just dialed the number and were routed through it.

Re: How Does FreeConferenceCall.com Make Money? (2012)

#20

Post by jeffreybezos »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #6
misterprime wrote: post #4

Clever, but it still sounds like it wouldn't add up to that much. They only make a small amount when it connects to a user connected through a small phone company right? Based on this description connecting someone on AT&T in NYC to Verizon in LA wouldn't result in any revenue.

You put the conferencing gear in rural telco colos where the termination fee is high. It’s a public policy (universal service fund) arbitrage play.

Is it just an Asterisk server with some T1 cards?

Is this not viable anymore?

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