Quote:
Originally Posted by snidely
Re: IOM rates.
There was a "high end" telephony conf. about 10 days ago in S.F. sponsored by oreillynet.com. There were at least 200 people there from all over the world.
No - I didn't spend the $2K to attend. However, I did go one afternoon and evening when you could sign up and get into the Exhibit Hall for free. I couldn't help it if I accidentally walked in on a couple of conferences. Many/most of the sessions were WAY above my head.
Anyway, I wound up talking to someone w. a UK accent - a person who is somewhat well known in "telephony circles" in the U.S., (he was interviewed by Reuters about an hour earlier). I asked him about the IOM "carriers". He said that the free ride for the IOM resellers will probably end soon - for the same reason the Iowa "free calling to Europe" operations were shut down.
[An aside, there is still one of those free calls to many countries operations with a Minnesota number 218-339-1990. At least it was still working last Friday.]
He didn't tell me the exact reasons and I didn't know anyone else to verify this with.
My guess is that either (1) the central UK govt. subsidizes the IOM operator and/or (2) there is a much higher termination cost for calling an IOM number that the carriers either (a) don't know about or (b) do know but their systems can't distinguish between calls going to diff. UK - +44 - systems.
I do know that some operators can't distinguish between calls going to the mainland U.S. and countries in the Carribean w. +1 numbers for setting rates.
So, for now, this is just a RUMOR. I have seen this mentioned either here or elsewhere in a forum.
...mike
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I'm not sure what is meant by a 'free ride' by IoM carriers. Operations from IoM work on a fully regulated basis and within standard contracts. Any offers that are made are the result of normal 'blending' not by exploiting any loopholes.