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Least-Cost Routing Threatens Rural Phone Call Completion
New submitter kybred writes "Rural landline users are increasingly having problems with incoming calls not completing or being dropped. The culprit may be the bargain long distance carriers penchant for 'least cost routing' combined with the conversion of the Universal Service Fund to the Connect America Fund. From the Fine Article: 'Rural phone companies are the victim here," Steve Head says. "They charge a higher rate to terminate calls as it costs more for them. Shoreham Tel gets beat up because everyone calls them and says something is wrong with your system, but it's not. We've been through all of their lines and equipment and there is nothing wrong with it; it's the least-cost routing carriers.'"
I had to deal with this in our corporate PBX, we connect to a provider who does god-knows-what with the call. They do this least-cost routing, but when the call does not arrive it is on the customer to figure out WTF is going on. The provider saves .01 cents on your phone call and the customer pays for the call AND the support! What a way to run a business.
Traffic pumping is/was a practice that essentially let rural US phone companies suck money directly out of large carriers bank accounts. The various regulations in place over the telecom industry meant that companies like AT&T couldn't do anything to stop it.
If the telecom industry had not been regulated, people who lived in rural areas would have have gotten phone service. One might rationally argue along the lines of "Too damned bad. Move to town, ya hick.", but most people would not. The phone service is a utility, a vital one. As such the phone company was granted certain benefits (rights of way for the stringing and later, burying, of cable, for example). In exchange it agreed to wire rural areas. There's more involved than just that, but you get the idea. Without regulation, things would have been a mess, with consumers held hostage. Regulation can fix this scenario too. It's complicated though. You can't just telll the LD carriers "you must complete this call" if doing so costs them more than they charge. Likewise, the small rural phone companies must receive enough revenue to maintain their operation. And of course, wireless muddies things even further. The only way this is going to get fixed is if sane regulation is brought to bear.
Hang on - it's 'least cost routing'. That means you do it for as little cost as you can mange, not that you only do it as long as it costs less than some arbitrary threshold.
If you can't route it for more than what you charge (on average) then you're not charging enough. You can't just drop the call!
Baloney. If least cost routing were at fault VoIP services like Vonage would fail long before a rural telco. Whatever the problem is at Shoreham Telephone it has nothing to do with least cost routing and everything to do with their technical infrastructure and choice of direct vendors.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
"the telcos have no obligation to lose money servicing a handful of remote locations"
Actually, they do. In return, they get things like rights-of-way for running their lines and placing their equipment in areas which are highly profitable.
The telcos have no right to make use of public resources to simply "skim the cream."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
You're missing the point. These people HAVE phone service, but due to the way phone companies share the money that the calling customers pay for a call across networks, some inbound calls do not connect. When you pay your phone company to call someone on another network, your phone company pays that other network to connect the call. Phone companies charge different rates for that. When there's a mismatch between what the originating network expects to pay and what the terminating network asks, then the call is dropped somewhere along the line where a least cost long distance provider decides that the pay is not enough to cover the costs and render a profit. The callee never knows and the caller just experiences a call not going through.
Stuff going on in countries with a less developed communications infrastructure can still be of value to the rest of us.
They expect to receive the service they paid for. Same as those living in the middle of a 5 mil+ city.
If the company can't provide them with the service, they shouldn't have sold it. I doubt on their contract says anywhere that X% of the calls will be randomly dropped.
I see one solution for them, for those companies I mean. Skype or something similar. Calls anywhere in the world for a flat fee. Bypass those "carriers" entirely.
The little local companies that completed the calls were getting astronomical call termination rates. They milked the cow until it was dry.
So we need to revisit the termination scheme for telecom. Otherwise what will happen is that you won't be able to complete calls into the backwaters of the U.S. Only serves them right for getting greedy!
I live in southwest Montana and we're serviced by a rural telephone co-op. I work in Big Sky, Montana, and you might recognize that name because it's one of the biggest ski resorts in the country. This problem didn't really exist three years ago and has increased significantly in just the past year. For those of you unfamiliar with rural telephone co-ops, here's a smattering of what it's like.. because it's QUITE different than dealing with carriers or even your local CLEC:
1. Rural telephone co-ops are exempt from the 1995 Telecommunications Act. That means all sorts of things, one of which was they were until very recently exempt from providing E911 service. (This is something your local PSAP probably takes for granted. We're about 15 years behind the times.)
2. We can't call a lot of Google Voice numbers. I'm not sure why. Possibly it's because the local co-op has a problem with their dial plan settings, that happens. However, some Google Voice numbers do work. It's just weird.
3. There's a lot of companies that provide hosted toll free numbers and provide both ACD-like services as well as collecting ANI so you can run all kinds of nice reports. We use services like that and increasingly we've run into a lot of problems because sometimes they outright can't transfer calls to our local DID's. Typically those kind of companies use cheapo LD carriers, but they also usually have a few PRI's with major carriers like AT&T. We usually have to request they change their default routing to use one of those carriers instead.
4. On the flipside, we have surprisingly good Internet service. Three years ago we put in a 50x5Mbps connection and this year we augmented it with a 26x1. All of that service costs us $500 a month. That's not as spectacular of a deal as it was 3 years ago, but considering where we are, it's pretty impressive. At home, I've got fiber to our house - not bad for a community of 838 people.
----- obSig
The boonies are usually red areas that vote republican and spout off nonsense about being independent of Obama and the evil liberals who suck up all the money
Here is your chance to practice what you preach
Pay for your lifestyle
And cheap calls is all it is. They want to pay the same as everyone else. Look, I spent a lot of time living in rural areas in the US and elsewhere. I know the issues. I know the costs. But I am not asking anyone else to pay costs that I choose in incur. In other countries you have phone service. You just pay for a cell phone. And if you have to you pay for a booster station. That is all there is too it. There are very few areas in the US that have no cell reception, and I am sure most would work with a booster. Hell, in my house I don't have good cell reception. Do I go to the feds and demand a personal booster?
If you want reliable phone, do what others have done. Form a cooperative. Pull fiber to the community, and then have the individuals pull wire to their properties. Say this is too expensive, say that the feds should pay for it? Well them maybe you should vote for a liberal government who will tax enough to fund it?
What I feel is really funny is that somehow taxpayers are expected to foot the bill so that people can just pick up the phone whenever they want to just to chat, and we are expected to pay for that entitlement. Give me a break. When I was growing up we often did not talk to our extended family. Why? Because it was expensive and we could not afford it. Maybe once a week on sunday morning, but that was it. I guess we had the advantage is that we were literate so we wrote letters.
I normally am much more receptive to these complaints. We are a rich country so we should have universal reliable communication, health care, education, transportation, teleportation, rib eye, Helly Hansen clothing, but given that those people just voted in great majority against it, it seems a little over the top.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
No internet in the boonies, so how you expecting skype to work? magical skype dust?
The ONLY option for broadband for most rural people is satellite internet. and upload is typically isdn speeds AND you have a minimum of 3000ms latency. which blows to hell skype calls.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Last time I checked, people in cities paid for all of that.
Dilbert RSS feed
The rural areas already have service installed and wire/firbe pulled to their homes. They have no need for federal assistance and who they voted for has NOTHING to do with this. (Can we please get past this election stupidity.)
The issue is that because the routes to rural services cost more, many carriers and long distance providers will not route calls to them. That means that when Jr. moves to NYC and leaves Granny in BFE, Jr. can't call Granny. She has service and she can call him in NYC, but Verizon or L3 doesn't route calls back to BFE because they deem the route cost too high.
There are two appropriate solutions:
1. Verizon eats the higher cost of the route. They "lose" money and won;t do that.
2. Verizon passes the higher charges onto the customer. That's "hard" and since the customer is on a "Free Nationwide Long Distance Plan" they are likely to take issue if Verizon charges them extra.
So are they going to PAY for the service? The real price, not the subsidized cost. No?
Thought so.
I work for a small rural telecom, and we deal with this issue quite literally every week. Someone who lives out in what most would consider the middle of nowhere, ends up having a call completion issue. And who do they blame? Their telephone company, of course. After all, we provide the telephone service, and people assume that a paid service is supposed to just work. Telling these people to move back to a city is ridiculous also, as many of them are running farms or performing other (sometimes astronomy related work in my state) tasks that can't be done in a city.
The real problem is that long distance providers often don't want to even work with us on the issue. We can call up CenturyLink, for example, and they will tell us that they're unable to work with us directly. We have to tell person A, who initiated the call that person B was unable to receive and is complaining about, that they need to complain to CenturyLink. The person who initiates the call that did not go through properly has to initiate the complaint. And why would they do that, since they're able to call everyone else without issue? Clearly person B has an issue with their service.
In short, it's a giant cluster-f. I'm tired of having to tell people who pay money for their service that some larger telecom can't get its sh*t together. Meanwhile, we check every copper line from the CO to the customer sometimes because we want to give the benefit of the doubt and ensure the customer isn't having another issue, and it comes down to call completion problems. Honestly, I think the FCC should be forcing long distance carriers to pay for the time wasted due to their incompetence. The issue would get fixed a lot faster that way.
Yes, and the more that the farmers have to pay for communications, the more they'll have to charge you for food.
They already charge me for food. You mean charge more, I assume, but I'm fine with that. Even if we want to help some people who can't afford food, it's much saner to subsidize that (possibly with food stamps) than doing a crazy scheme of indirectly taxing and subsidizing everyone.
The Internet is not a luxury for farmers these days any more than it is for any other business. We're constantly being bombarded with news stories about how, by virtue of various data services farmers make themselves more productive.
Great! If it makes them more productive, that just means it actually costs them less.
One way or another, however, you - the farm products consumer - end up footing the bill for it. The question is, do you want farmers to have to pay for their data services at retail rates, one farm at a time, or wholesale rates, through some sort of organization?
However they want, I don't presume to decide for them. Farmers are not children, and they are much more informed than me about their local rates and whether it'd make sense or not to form a co-op.
Dilbert RSS feed
I have a suspicion that if everyone had to do that, many people would be in for a nasty surprise.
Ezekiel 23:20
Haven't the telcos ever heard of "Lowest Cost Spanning Trees?". This is what's done in internet routers to prevent exactly the kinds of infinite loops causing the problems there. Spanning trees still provide the carriers with the best available pricing for a given set of call end points over the available routers, but also ensure that infinite loops don't occur within the network, thus providing proper connectivity to the end user.
Nice people. They try hard. But. Their services are overpriced and not reliable. You are forced into a landline, like it or not, to get dsl. (that landline runs 17.50 plus about 7.50 in FCC garbage which is pretty much what Verizoff charges in other locations). The DSL service is marginal. What is described as 'up to 6 Mbps' is in fact.. (for me) below 3 as the data transmission is unreliable faster than that. Their cable service is.. dreadful? Often goes out of service for long periods. While we all understand the economics of remote/rural telecoms, people should also keep in mind that Waitsfield Telecom has actively fought to keep other providers out of our service area. They could have competition but they have made sure they do not have it. The years of nobody else wanting to try to serve our area are gone over but as customers, we are denied those choices becasue it would likely mean the wend of Waitsfield Telecom.
They don't have to. You and I are paying for it with the Universal Service Fund, or Connect America Fund, as TIL it's called. The carriers are trying to increase profits by making that fund a profit, instead of using it for what it was originally designed for - to bring affordable phone service to those living out in rural areas. To me, this should be handled the same as a tax evasion or fraud case. It is a government enforced "tax" after all, and if one penny of that fund goes to anything other than to provide service to the rural community, someone should go to jail.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
If the company can't provide them with the service, they shouldn't have sold it.
The company is providing perfect service. Outgoing calls are working great.
Incoming calls, however, are not reaching the company. There is nothing the company can do about that.
The reason for the problem is that providers get money for handling incoming calls, and rural telecoms get more (they have more infrastructure to maintain per billed minute). Regular customers tend to pay the same price to call all of the US, and so the cheaper providers end up actually losing money on calls to rural areas. Therefore (some of) the other providers do everything in their power to avoid that cost, including dropping expensive calls on the floor or degrading quality, in the hope that the caller will either switch to a cell phone or that the two ends will decide to reestablish the call in the other direction. Incoming calls are practically always profitable.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
They don't have to. You and I are paying for it with the Universal Service Fund, or Connect America Fund, as TIL it's called. The carriers are trying to increase profits by making that fund a profit, instead of using it for what it was originally designed for - to bring affordable phone service to those living out in rural areas. To me, this should be handled the same as a tax evasion or fraud case. It is a government enforced "tax" after all, and if one penny of that fund goes to anything other than to provide service to the rural community, someone should go to jail.
Lets just get over the fact that there is going to be a profit, OK?
Nobody builds a telephone company to break even or run at a loss. Get over it.
You are basically saying that these rural phone companies can't take any profit unless they forego the fund.
The fund is there to level the playing field so that rural customers can afford telephone service, because without it the customer to infrastructure ratio would make it unprofitable to provide service at all. The fund is there PRECISELY to make it possible to provide the service to these areas AND a profit to the phone company owners. It is working as intended.
Universal Service Fund isn't even directly involved here.
I suggest you RTFA again.
Least-cost routing can lead to dropped calls. What happens essentially is when one dials into Shoreham the call may be routed through, for instance, an ATT router, and is then handed off to one of the hundreds of discount long-distance carriers. When this carrier’s computers quickly calculate that the call is a money loser because Shoreham Tel is allowed to charge a fraction more to access its lines, the secondary carrier simply drops the call.
The problem is unscrupulous call routing services that do not fulfill their contractual obligation to route the call if the only route available has a slightly higher cost.
They simply drop the call, and notify the carrier that the call ended. (They lie).
These call routing services are middle men, responsible only to the carriers with which they contract. They are virtually unregulated.
This is strictly a contract law problem. The big carriers need to hold those call routing services feet to the fire, or use their own call routing facilities.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
While you are otherwise correct, I do have to complain about one thing you said.
Nobody builds a telephone company to break even or run at a loss. Get over it.
Yes they do. It's called a cooperative. It's legally (and actually) a non-profit. They're relatively common in the rural southwest, because even with the USF, it was impossible to attract a for-profit carrier to the region. I still have my membership certificate for one in Texas I used for a while.
Personally I think all utilities should be run as co-ops. Extracting a profit for a life-essential service like water is wrong. Fortunately most states still have avid Public Utilities Commissions that strongly regulate water utilities, but all it would take is some asshole shouting "deregulate" long enough and that could change. And that would be unfortunate.
Lets just get over the fact that there is going to be a profit, OK? Nobody builds a telephone company to break even or run at a loss. Get over it.
You are basically saying that these rural phone companies can't take any profit unless they forego the fund.
I have no problem with them making profit, that's what the monthly fees are for. The USF is for building and maintaining the infrastructure, or helping to build and maintain it - it should not be used to pay for that infrastructure building and maintenance in full. Nor should the USF in any way be used to pay anyone's salary, other than those maintaining the lines and poles, and again, not in full. It's supposed to help not provide.
Least-cost routing can lead to dropped calls. What happens essentially is when one dials into Shoreham the call may be routed through, for instance, an ATT router, and is then handed off to one of the hundreds of discount long-distance carriers. When this carrier’s computers quickly calculate that the call is a money loser because Shoreham Tel is allowed to charge a fraction more to access its lines, the secondary carrier simply drops the call.
The problem is unscrupulous call routing services that do not fulfill their contractual obligation to route the call if the only route available has a slightly higher cost.
They simply drop the call, and notify the carrier that the call ended. (They lie).
These call routing services are middle men, responsible only to the carriers with which they contract. They are virtually unregulated.
This is strictly a contract law problem. The big carriers need to hold those call routing services feet to the fire, or use their own call routing facilities.
I suggest you RTFA again.
Yes, I got off into a tangent on the USF usage. I don't believe anyone should be made to lose money providing a service. They should be allowed to charge a bit more for that call, informing the caller beforehand that it will cost a penny or two more per minute for this call, allowing them to terminate if they wish. This will, of course, have to be watched, otherwise you'll have the phone companys adding on a charge even when it wouldn't over-cost them.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
If you sign up with dodgy VoIP provider, you get dodgy service, no big surprise here. However at least in Europe you don't get situation when you have "normal" operators on both sides of the call, but calls still fail due to some low-cost middleman.
I'm currently a member of an electric cooperative and it does all of those things you imply are the sole province of for-profit organizations. It maintains a capital fund for operations, maintenance, replacement, and expansion. Nobody pays dues. We pay our electric bill. The bill is itemized with two items: the actual cost of the electricity we consume, and a daily availability fee that maintains that capital fund and pays for the employees and plant. I pay 1/3rd to as little as 1/4th what people a mile away from me who fall in the for-profit electric company's operating area pay, and I get MORE reliable service. This is not a made-up claim from my co-op, either. This is statistics from the state PUC.
The co-op is 71 years old and has better plant than the for-profit company in the region. If state law could be changed to allow the co-op to enter incorporated cities, the for-profit company would very likely go out of business in the state. The for-profit company lobbies heavily on a constant basis to prevent just that.
Nor is the co-op small. It collects just over $100 million in revenue annually.
Yes the co-op has debt. It's long term debt commensurate with the size of the organization, and the rates are far from usurious. The co-op has an excellent credit rating. Having and servicing such debt is a normal business practice and the co-op does it for the same reason a business does: it benefits the co-op. In truth, the balance sheet looks quite similar to a for-profit corporation of similar size, with the exception that there is no line item labeled Net Profit. There is nothing wrong with charging money to provide service, maintain standards, expand as needed, and generally take care of business. The co-op intentionally charges a little more than required to maintain the capital fund, then five years down the road, pays out capital fund refunds of the overage to its owners: me and my neighbors.
I suppose, once upon a time, paying the initial investors had a place in the balance sheet. They don't anymore. The co-op can pay off initial investors, instead of forever having a vampire sucking money out of its balance sheets at my expense. There is no small, privileged group of investors who get to pull money out of the organization just because they had money 70 years ago. More to the point, there is no small, privileged group of investors with voting control of stock who gets to fuck up the organization and its service for their sole short-term financial benefit. Everything is wrong with "making money" on utilities, water, electric or indeed, telecommunications, and that last is one of the main reasons applicable today.
There are co-ops and then there are co-ops. A co-op with correctly written bylaws is incredibly robust. Non-profits are neither simplistic nor short sighted when set up properly and run well.
You aren't really looking, then. The providers that you pay are paying someone else. Nobody runs their own worldwide network. Somewhere, someone cuts corners, for one of many reasons. Whoever sends calls to them gets screwed. The example telco in this article should figure out who the major call dropping problem carrier is, and refuse to accept calls from them at all. There is probably one or two bad actors in each case that fuck it up for everyone.