Tuesday, December 30. 2008Sometimes You Just Have To Shake Your Head......John Linton ....and wonder what age group these sorts of people belong to. By these sorts of people, in this instance, I mean the writers of this article and the 'audience' they wrote it for: http://apcmag.com/optus_threatens_customers_over_voip_calls.htm Unless I'm misreading it, and I may well be, it appears to be saying that it is wrong for a carrier (Optus in this case - also the carrier this particular 'magazine' never loses an opportunity of attacking every time it can) to try and ensure its services aren't used to give a free ride to third parties. My understanding of the background of providing mobile services, Australia wide, is that it takes well in excess of $A5 billion in capital investment and a pay back period of greater than ten years - a pretty significant investment in an Australian context and one that only three, possibly four, companies have ponied up the money to do. My further understanding is that the mobile carriers devise their convoluted "capped" and "unlimited" plans as marketing devices to make people with less numeracy skills than they should have lock themselves in to paying a lot of money each month for 24 months or so. The 'unlimited" and "capped" offerings are, of course, not "unlimited" or "capped" at all in any real sense being 'ameliorated' by more ts and cs and 'excepts' than any averagely intelligent person can get their mind around - however that is how mobile marketing in this, and other countries, has developed so few if any people either "read the fine print" or actually check on the 'excepts'. One thing even the most mentally challenged person should be able to understand is that it isn't commercially possible to make a call from a mobile in Australia to another country at NO CHARGE. Surely even the dumbest of the dumb would understand that there is a cost for making ANY phone call and that cost has to be paid? All that the "free international call" companies listed in the article are doing is to try and exploit the service offered by a mobile/wire line carrier for their own profits and now one of the carriers they are trying to exploit has closed one of their loopholes by pointing out it breaches their published ts and cs. It really doesn't matter that any individual believes the specific restriction isn't "fair" or "reasonable" or any thing else - they agreed to it prior to signing up to use the service and it's contractually binding. Whether or not Optus is in fact able to 'refuse' to provide interconnect to a third party (who almost certainly doesn't hold a carrier license) is not something I can comment on but I would be pretty sure that Optus' lawyers were sure before permitting the action to be taken so I'm not going to make any comments on "legality" based on my almost complete lack of knowledge of the Telecommunications Act and it would seem to me, personally, that anyone else without such detailed and specific knowledge should do the same. Apparently the article's author and the article's audience aren't expected to be able to understand either basic commercial imperatives or contract law which is why the article's writer felt free to make the comments in the article. The tricky issue for all mobile and wire line carriers for the past 3 - 4 years has been how to accommodate VoIP in terms of their then and current tariffs and how to deal with the fringe rip off entities that will try and exploit their services based on 'loop holes' that VoIP has 'exposed' in their services and processes put in place in a 'pre-VoIP era'. Doubtless other mobile and wire line carriers will consider how/if their own services are being misused and if they are they too will take whatever actions they deem appropriate to protect the "cost/price equations" they have based their own 'capped" and "unlimited" plans on. My only interest in the article was to see if any "facts" were relevant to Exetel's current use of VoIP over the Optus mobile HSPA service. At first reading of the article they don't appear to be - but then an article in a magazine is not exactly legal advice on a specific contract. Exetel encourages it's HSPA users to use VoIP on their mobile hand set to reduce mobile call costs within Australia or internationally if they wish to do that. As they are using an Optus data service to make those calls (rather than dialing in to another entities service using an Optus mobile voice service) I can't see that there is any problem as the end user is paying for the data they are using and it is irrelevant that the packets are being used to carry 'voice' rather than 'data' to and from the user's handset - the tariff is the same as set by Optus to Exetel via the supply contract. It seems to me that a growing percentage of mobile telephone users will use VoIP over the coming 12 - 24 months which is why Exetel has gone to a lot of trouble (and expense) to put in place our own VoIP switches and has taken so much time to ensure we can deliver a constantly reliable VoIP service over HSPA. How Optus, or any other mobile carrier, is going to come to grips with how such usage is going to effect their mobile tariffing in the future is not something I have to worry about. I'm currently assuming that it isn't something that would overly concern them ASSUMING they don't make the same errors in 'constructing' "free" and "capped" data plans that have just been exploited by the "loop hole abuser" fringe entities that will always be a part of any marketplace. One more thing to worry about.
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I must admit that one of the attractions of exetel is that the plans are relatively simple and straight forward - I would be very surprised if I got caught in this sort of contractual loop-hole with you guys.
I wonder, though, how you respond to the "network neutrality" side of the argument. If Joe Users pays $x per month for unlimited calls to any .au number, it should not concern Optus whether those calls are used to talk to Mum, to Kevin, to hot-dating-service, or to a machine that digitises Joe's speech and sends it over the Internet to Kazakstan. It is a voice call to a .au number - nothing else should matter. Exetel has a service where by I can dial a .au land-line number and then be connected by VOIP to anywhere in the world at reasonable rates. Would you expect Optus to be charging extra for mobile calls to those numbers? Would it bother you (either in a business sense or a philosophical sense) if they did? Comments (2)
As you say - Exetel try an make its plans as simple as possible.
What Optus, or any other supplier may choose to do is none of our concern and we have no opinion on it. We will always have to abide by the terms and conditions of our contracts we have with our suppliers. Comments (5)
Confused.
You have no opinion on what Optus may choose to do, but you obviously do have an opinion on what APC writes about what they do, which seems to imply an opinion on the original action. If Optus is genuinely concerned by the competition these sites provide, maybe that indicates there is a real market for cheap, lower quality calls. Maybe they should enter that market rather than trying to abuse semi-monopoly strengths to push others out of that market. Comments (2)
I think people (i.e. customers) have a huge range of choices and should select what suits their specific needs.
I also think that if they are old enough to buy their own services then they are old enough to read the contract they are entering in to. I also believe that if they are old enough to buy their own service then they are also old enough to understand that "free" doesn't exist in the commercial world. APC, and apparently its readers, seem to fail to understand either of those two basic points. Telecommunications in Australia is heavily regulated and invigilated and doesn't need a bunch of kids complaining that the world is "unfair" to do their job. Optus cannot, in any sense of the word, be described as a "monopoly" - unless I have misunderstood both the meaning of that word and the size of Optus in mobile and wire line offerings. Comments (5)
I disagree that these "free" calls are not commercially possible. What is most likely occurring is that these service providers have an arrangement with a mobile carrier (Vodafone in this instance from what I've read) to receive a portion of the call termination fee. Given that you can purchase VOIP calls to .au mobiles for a little over 10c/minute (most of which would go to the call terminator) and to the "free" international destinations for less that 10c/min there's a margin available.
Comment (1)
I'm happy to see the loophole closed and these 'VoIP operators' pushed out, they offer a 3rd rate service and hide behind the free international component as an excuse for poor quality calls, in my opinion they tarnish the reputations of the suppliers that do VoIP correctly
Comment (1)
I suspect that this will be quickly reversed as hundreds of users of phonecards wont have recieved/understood the SMS and will be stung by this for likely big $
Such a change to billing terms should definately be put in writing on a billing statement at the bare minimum and/or a voice announcement prior to call connection. im never for people operating in the margins but I personally dont think this is a massive abuse of the service (as some of the other "tricks" like 5c redirection tricks often discussed in forums are) and is something Optus should have considered in their usage modeling before releasing "all you can eat" plans. Comment (1)
I can't help but think that the whole concept of paying for a phone call is soon to be outdated. It's a remnant of the old closed phone system.
With VOIP what are the providers actually providing? Seems to be just an index for net to net calls. Sooner or later all calls will be VOIP at low or no cost in my opinion. Comment (1)
Who will provide the connections to your PC for nothing and the trunk capacities all over Australia and the globe to make that possible?
Who will invest in new infrastructures to carry the traffic if no-one wants to pay? Comments (5)
I think you will find the poster reffered to "timed phone calls" rather than "free network connectivity to their home PC and all aroud the country.
People will still pay (as you have mentioned in previous blogs) for a data connection of some sort, and VOIP will be used for all the calls. I fail to distinguish how it is significantly different to exetel "exploiting" the cost savings that can be achieved running HSDPA and a voip call over the top of that. When exetel were sold the service, and signed the contracts - perhaps optus didnt realise exactly what you were going to use it for, but that doesnt mean its breaching the contract. Surely whatever a customer does with the connection at the other end of the phone call leg is their business (provided its legal) and not that of optus to go and determine where/whom they are talking to once the call terminates from their network. Hopefully you wont find yourself in the same predicament if optus start getting upset at VOIP of HSDPA. Comment (1)
Exetel offers a data service that may be used for VoIP (a data service) alongside a whole lot of other data services.
The tariff is based on data usage and VoIP uses data so their is no issue with the tariffing. Optus were well aware of what Exetel's "go to market" plans were and, as far as i can see, our supply contract (a layer 2 service) can have no restraints of the type you are referring to (however I'm not a lawyer). I could be wrong - but I can't see where we could have a problem. Comments (5)
I would say, what Optus has done to its resellers, is the equivalent to doing the following to a exetel HSPA service:
1. using deep packet inspection to filter voip packets destined to international calls (since optus controls the lacs that your lns's connect to, its not so hard to do). 2. inserting a warning message into that voip call (simply a series of spoofed udp packets). Extel could possibly overcome this by: 1. having some form of encryption, like IPSec or a VPN/IPsec, with an online key generator for customers to provide your lns's with the generated public keys. 2. Get angry with optus. 3. realise that most people hate communication by phone, and promote using a jabber client, the rest the dataplan can be used for what people really want, which is porn. Comment (1)
John, how you interpret Optus' actions depends on whether you come at it from a network operator's perspective or a consumer's perspective. Obviously, you come from the former and APC comes from the latter.
However, as much as businesses might not like it, trade practices laws trump businesses' desire to make profits. Therefore, the fact that Optus marketed its Timeless plans as offering 'unlimited calls to Australian GSM mobiles' should be upheld, as that's what consumers thought they were buying. There are no 'excepts' in this claim. And when a consumer calls one of those VoIP providers that uses a mobile number as their incoming gateway, Optus is only paying the same cost to connect the call as if they were calling any other mobile. There's no such thing as a premium mobile number, after all. I totally agree that the VoIP services are exploiting Optus' pricing structure for their own commercial gain, but that's Optus' fault, not the consumers'. Optus can't just unilaterally plug a hole in their price structure and expect consumers to accept it if it disadvantages them. They should, at the very least, allow consumers who wish to to exit their contracts without penalty. Comment (1)
Dan,
I'm not a lawyer nor do I have any detailed knowledge of telecommunications and contract law. I would doubt that Optus have made any decision on the subject of your article without their legal advisors agreeing that what they did was covered under their ts and cs. What the real/final interpretation may turn out to be is completely beyond my understanding. I suppose I was commenting on the naivete and the "I want my money back" attitudes of so many buyers of services today and the fact that ANYONE can believe that they can get a phone call without paying for it. I completely agree that the various mobile plans are structured in ways that make it virtually impossible for anyone to understand exactly what they are buying but for someone to think that somehow they are getting something for nothing isn't realistic: irrespective of how many times the words "unlimited" or "free" are used. Physics refutes that anything is "unlimited" and commercial imperative prohibits anything from being "free". However, as you correctly pointed out - my views are based on having to listen to so many 'children' whine about their scams being ended "cos it's not fair". Comments (5)
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