[VoiceOps] FCC issues Declaratory Ruling on Call Termination

[Justin B Newman]

On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 10:30 PM, Charles Boening <charlieb at cot.net> wrote:
> Exactly.  As a rural carrier I can attest to that.  We have the capacity.
> Send the dang call.
>
<snip>
> rural communities.  The carriers sending these calls to the least cost
> routers usually do have capacity but are trying to save a buck and knowingly
> passing the calls off to a 3rd party who may not have the capacity.  I even
> doubt that the least cost routers don’t have capacity.  It’s not like they

For a long time, we found ourselves struggling to provide good answers
re: how to terminate these calls. One large carrier rated all the
conference destinations (and many other rural destinations) at $0.15
per minute. Another carrier provided competitive rates, but routinely
(more than 50% of the time) failed them, resulting in us sending the
calls at the usurious rate. We had a couple of blended carriers we
could technically send them to, but knew that it would probably "blow
the blend" there. This created a rather lousy situation. We ultimately
found a carrier who specializes in a few rural, conference routes[1].
Problem solved. To this day, I don't really complain about the rates,
even though they're higher than our "urban" rates. After all, that's
what blending is about. We're happy to pay the price, as long as what
we're paying has some relationship to what the rural carrier actually
charges.

-jbn

[1] - Happy to provide info off-list.