Listen: the carriers are scared. If there was a loophole that could make them money, they’d be on it like off-white on an Ikea pine chair, to coin a phrase. The terms of service they’re citing also makes for a specious argument:
We may block access to certain categories of numbers (e.g. 976, 900 and certain international destinations) or certain web sites if, in our sole discretion, we are experiencing excessive billing, collection, fraud problems or other misuse of our network.
AT&T spokesperson Mark Siegel said the company is blocking “certain numbers” for conferecing services, including FreeConferece.com’s, an action it feels appropriate under its wireless terms of service agreements. AT&T’s wireless service, he said, is for calls “between one person and another person, not between one person and many.”
The whole arbitrage scheme is pretty creepy, but until the laws and FCC regulations are changed, these services have a right to exist. Is this not capitalism? Are we not free?
You are right that AT&T would be (and has been) on top of any regulatory loophole they can find that is legal. That’s business.
But this is not a regulatory loophole. It is a fundamental feature of the telecom system. You can’t connect to everyone you want to without a way for one carrier to pay for using the network of another. Intercarrier exchange rates have been around for decades and will continue for the same.
So is the size of the exchange rate a loophole? You tell me. The average long distance rate is about 7 or 8 cents per minute. The Iowa telco’s being sued by AT&T have rates (set by the FCC) at 4 cents to 7 cents per minute according to the filing (except one outlier). If they attacked the highest rate companies, that means most of the companies collecting fees are less than 4 cents a minute.
How much profit should AT&T be able to make for long distance service? Since you can buy a calling card for a lot less than 3 or 4 cents a minute, don’t you think they are making money here?
So what else could this be about? Who dominates 800-service? That would be AT&T. If free conferencing were eliminated, what would people do? Go back to 800-service conferencing.
We offer consumers a choice at prices (including no charge from us) that create profits for us, our partners, and even AT&T. If a consumer wants 800 service, we offer that too.
We are not going to tolerate illegal blocking of our service. This is an unpleasant bump in the road for us, but does not threaten our service. We are offering alternative numbers to affected customers and business is continuing as usual.
This is not a creepy scheme but a normal feature of a regulated business. It doesn’t cost you more, it saves you. And it takes a lot of pressure off the pure subsidies being taken from you under the Universal Service Fund.
Trust me in that I know that these calls are not free (neither is the Internet although we like to treat it that way). Arbitrage is had when some flat rated pricing plan is gamed to cherry pick destinations that cost more than the flat rate fee. When this happens to high fee areas (like Int’l calls) real dollars are paid and lost. Just like Target limits quantities for the Day after Thanksgiving items to limit their losses (they’re goal to get you in the store – not subsidize a scalping business), Carriers have to limit their losses on loss-leading destinations. Those are the facts. Just remember what mom said – there no such thing as a free lunch. The adage of putting back more than we take applies to everything we do in the bigger scheme of things. Knowingly taking advantage of arbatrage is literally taking from one pocket and putting it in your own. In these cases the direct result are lost jobs.
I found a workaround to this problem! Hopefully someone will benefit from my solution.
If you use Vonage, or other VOIP service, you can Forward all of your calls to another number. I set my Vonage line to forward to FreeConference.com’s conference line and tested 5 people with Cingular lines to call my Vonage line at the same time. They were all forwarded to the FreeConference line instantly, and to them it was completely transparent. They were greeted with the FreeConference voice prompt and had no problem joining my conference! Up yours Cingular! ;-)
Please note: This method will use up minutes from your allotment in your Vonage plan unless you are on the Unlimited $24.99 plan (I’m on the 500 min plan).