[Infowarrior] - Cingular, Qwest blocking Œ Free ¹ Calls

[Richard Forno]

Cingular, Qwest blocking ŒFree¹ Calls

Written by Paul Kapustka
Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 10:35 AM PT | 16 comments
http://gigaom.com/2007/03/15/cingular-qwest-blocking-free-calls/

Looks like the empire is finding new ways to fight back ‹ according to
FreeConference.com, another rural-ISP free-calling operator, major carriers
Cingular, Qwest and Sprint are actively blocking users trying to call
FreeConference.com, claiming it might be a violation of those carriers¹
acceptable use policies.

FreeConference.com, which offers ³free² conference calls for the price of a
long-distance call to numbers in Iowa or Minnesota, sent an email to its
users saying that Cingular (aka AT&T Wireless) started blocking calls to
FreeConference.com on March 9, with Qwest and Sprint following suit soon
thereafter. FreeConference.com CEO Alex Cory told us in an email exchange
today that the company ³did not get prior notice [about the blocking], nor
have our or our customers¹ repeated attempts to get reasonable explanations
gotten anywhere.² UPDATE: An AT&T spokesperson confirmed the company is
blocking the calls.

While the blocking doesn¹t seem to be a blanket move ‹ we were able to get
through to FreeConference.com this morning using a Cingular handset in
California ‹ Cory says that any blocking, even limited blocking, ³is
unacceptable.² Langauge from a Cingular user forum shows why Cingular may
believe it is right to block such services:

    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 ³certain numbers²
for conferecing services, including FreeConferece.com¹s, an action it feels
appropriate under its wireless terms of service agreements. AT&T¹s wireless
service, he said, is for calls ³between one person and another person, not
between one person and many.²

Cory, who says that FreeConference.com¹s regulatory-fee arbitrage
compensation structure isn¹t on the same level as the free international
calling plans (he claims all FreeConference.com¹s calls are actually
terminated in the local area where they are connected), doesn¹t agree with
Cingular¹s take but will not comment much further ‹ ³We believe they are
violating [regulations], but it is probably best to leave this to the
lawyers.²

Theoretically, AT&T could be on the hook for multiple call-termination
charges for the conference calls, since each participant in the conference
could count as another termination ‹ so it¹s pretty clear why they might try
to use any method at their disposal to discourge such operations.

Typically, long-distance or cellular providers pay local telcos a
termination fee for each call that is completed. In rural areas where
regional telcos have higher-than-usual termination fees, telcos and
free-calling concerns have partnered to build businesses where some amount
of profit is based on the spread between what the call-completion costs and
what they charge the long-distance provider.

Additional reporting by Katie Fehrenbacher.