[VoiceOps] Terminating 800 traffic with Caller ID of an 800 #

[Justin B Newman]

On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 12:22 AM, Jay Hennigan <jay at west.net> wrote:
> On 2/16/12 4:41 PM, Justin B Newman wrote:
>
>> In my view, if an intermediate carrier is refusing to route the call,
>> they are in clear and direct violation of the FCC's recent orders. In
>> October, the FCC made it quite clear that incorrect, incomplete, or
>> otherwise untraceable billing information is not a basis for call
>> blocking.
>
> You may be right in terms of an intermediate carrier blocking it to a
> non-toll-free destination number.  What about the terminating toll-free
> carrier?   Do the FCC's orders specifically apply to calls terminating
> on a toll-free number?  These are treated differently from conventional
> lines in that the callee pays the freight and caller-ID blocking is
> supposed to be ineffective.

There's no distinction. Nor need there be. In both cases, it's phantom
traffic. For intermediate carriers, payment is no different ... it's
just a question of which end pays. For the terminating end, there's an
argument that they needn't pay for the calls, as they cannot be
properly rated.

> A carrier could argue that TF numbers aren't capable of origination so
> any call claiming to originate from one is by definition fraudulent and
> therefore not valid.  This would be particularly true if the called
> party is the one paying for the call.  Are carriers required by FCC to
> deliver fraudulent calls?

Yes, I think intermediate carriers ARE required to deliver
"fraudulent" calls. The FCC has put call completion above all else.
Aside from technical inability to complete the call, I don't think
there is any basis for an intermediate carrier to block a call.

> In any case, the destination end user can certainly refuse it.  This is
>  particularly true if the terminating number is toll-free and the ANI is
> missing or populated with a spoofed TF origin.

I agree. And in the end, this is the key. Ultimately, those placing
calls with a TF ANI need to understand that their call completion rate
will suffer. Carriers who are unable to populate the ANI and Caller ID
fields distinctly may find themselves with less business. Perhaps this
is an argument against giving up all of one's TDM trunks. For those of
us in the SIP world, this is functionality we may need to demand from
those with whom we interconnect. Or, perhaps in time, this demand will
evaporate as people forget this once worked. Or the nominal demand
will ultimately remain unmet as more and more carriers give up this
distinction.

Personally, on my home PBX, I send all calls originating from an 8xx
directly to voicemail.

-jbn