
How Does FreeConferenceCall.com Make Money? (2012) - coloneltcb
https://aaronparecki.com/2012/03/25/8/how-does-freeconferencecall-make-money
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aaronpk
I can't believe this post is making the rounds again six years later. Reply
All did a great podcast about a similar issue, it's worth a listen!

[https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/104-case-phantom-
calle...](https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/104-case-phantom-caller)

~~~
djsumdog
I remember that podcast episode, but that case was specifically about fraud
and someone getting dialers to call people and play weird stuff to keep them
on the line as long a possible. It's only a few cents here and there but it
adds up if you automate the process.

IIRC, the situation was brought up at a telecom conference and the calls
dropped suddenly; suggesting at least one of the people involved was deep into
the industry and probably at the conference. They even get an FBI agent on at
one time who is convinced they'll find this person.

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mabbo
A great example of rent-seeking. FreeConferenceCall isn't trying to provide a
service to users, it's trying to extract money from the rest of the world
through a legal clause that never anticipated this kind of exploitation.

While it's users are probably quite happy with the situation, the reality is
that the service they're receiving is being paid for by totally unrelated
parties.

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auser24
>the government allows them to charge

Seems like an euphemism for "the government forces the others to pay".

~~~
djschnei
Stockholm Syndrome

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jtokoph
Relevant ToS clause for AT&T Wireless:

>5.4 Unlimited Voice Services

>Unlimited voice Services are provided primarily for reasonably uninterrupted
live dialog between two individuals. If your use of unlimited voice Services
for conference calling or call forwarding exceeds 750 minutes per month, AT&T
may, at its option, terminate your Service or change your plan to one with no
unlimited usage components.

~~~
jjeaff
Has anyone ever experienced getting cancelled for this reason? I know quite a
few people that likely use more than 750 minutes on conference calls most
months. And I have never heard of anyone having a problem.

Also, that's an annoying caveat to "unlimited". Unlimited, except ... limited.

~~~
jameshart
This has been bothering me about Verizon’s current marketing push around every
individual on a family plan being able to get ‘the unlimited plan they need’.
I haven’t been in the market for a ‘family unlimited plan’ and frankly
understand little about mobile billing in general, so I have no idea what pain
point Verizon is claiming to address with this model - but the concept on its
face makes no sense to me. How can there be different ‘unlimited’ plans? On
what dimensions do plans vary if not ‘limits’? If the plans are all unlimited,
yet different, then why do you still identify them as ‘unlimited’ plans when
that is clearly not a distinguishing characteristic?

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robterrell
> I have no idea what pain point Verizon is claiming to address

I recently shopped for an "unlimited" family plan for my kids. The pain point
is "can I watch video?" As best I can determine, "unlimited" has become a
marketing term for "yes, you can stream Netflix, to some degree."

There might be a cap on the number of GB of transfer, after which you pay a
fee for more; or you can have no cap, but a limit after which your transfer
rate drops precipitously. Several providers do a thing where they'll force
Netflix (and I assume other streaming providers) to use a lower bitrate stream
variant, to help you preserve you data.

There appears to no longer be an actual unlimited plan in the US. Even my
grandfathered iPhone AT&T plan with "unlimited" data now has a cap after which
it is rate-limited.

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rtkwe
I'm kind of surprised the FTC or FCC hasn't made any more of a stink about the
clearly deceitful use of 'unlimited' on these plans.

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nwilkens
A while back I stumbled upon an interesting issue with a hacked Asterisk
server. It was routing calls to FreeConferenceCall.com and other free
conference numbers.

[https://www.mnxsolutions.com/security/i-accidentally-
recorde...](https://www.mnxsolutions.com/security/i-accidentally-recorded-
your-phone-calls.html)

~~~
StudentStuff
Toll fraud is quite common due to the VOIP industry not valuing security.
Combined with free conference calling numbers costing a bit to call (and calls
to these numbers lasting a fair while), I'm not surprised that most of the
traffic was headed to these numbers.

~~~
nwilkens
Any idea how this Asterisk server would have been added as a route?

These callers that were recorded, were not the ones trying to leverage the
hacked server, but rather just dialed the number and were routed through it.

~~~
mkching
One common exploit if only one user account is hacked is to set up a forward
to a specific high cost number that receives a lot of traffic. There are
carriers who aggregate these routes and even blend them in with legitimate
routes and then resell them to other carriers at a low cost.

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profmonocle
> Everything from blocking calls to free conference numbers, to lawsuits, to
> adding to your terms of service that you're not allowed to call them.

Notably, Google Voice charges 1¢ per minute to call some of these services,
even though US domestic calls are usually free.

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aardvark291
Life finds a way.

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ada1981
This is my fav comment in the thread, FYI. Never mind the downvotes.

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Kagerjay
How freeconferencecall.com makes money reminds me alot of how car windshield
companies make money. _(E.g. safelite)_

Insurance sometimes covers it, but a windshield company makes money through
the insurance company many times, not necessarily through you. Sometimes you
pay in the end for the higher insurance premiums down the road though,
depending on your state and insurance package.

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quickthrower2
Instead of price per minute why doesn't the government tax the big carriers
and subsidize the rural ones at a fixed monthly amount?

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StudentStuff
The original goal of this interstate call pricing scheme was to help encourage
universal POTS service through America without creating something like the
Universal Service Fund, primarily leaving it to "free" enterprise to provide
universal coverage, mainly through small, rural telco cooperatives in areas Ma
Bell wouldn't service.

Eventually the USF was created to help the least connected areas that didn't
have tons of urbanites calling to fund their local telco cooperative.
Meanwhile, these interstate calling rates were layered with intrastate calling
rates as the baby bells prepared for local loop unbundling, expecting
competing telephone companies to mainly target consumers.

Instead, what happened is CLECs mainly focused on business, creating those
classic 1000 free hour discs from AOL, NetZero and the like. This pissed the
Regional Bell Companies (which were the fragments of Bell Systems) off quite a
bit, and they've been pushing forward with bill and keep as much as they can
ever since.

Bill and Keep is essentially we bill eachother, and its hopefully close enough
to a wash that no checks need to be cut. Doesn't work out that way though when
dealing with even the most benign of businesses as your primary customer,
plumbers, pharmacies, medical practices and the like mainly take inbound
calls.

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bkyan
Are these termination fees still in effect?

~~~
StudentStuff
In some rural areas there are still extremely high ratecenters that are costly
to call. Looking at a ratedeck, 1240655 (Maryland), most Montana numbers and
especially the Northwestern Territories (up in Canada) are the costliest to
call, ranging from a few cents a minute to tens of cents a minute. Most flat
rate VOIP operators won't deliver calls to those numbers, and if they do,
they'll close your account if you call there too often.

The FCC has been cracking down on Traffic Pumping (which is what
FreeConferenceCall, AOL, NetZero, etc were all created to do) to these
prefixes, along with fake ringing that companies including T-Mobile do to make
it seem like the call is being connected to these high cost areas, meanwhile
the person your calling doesn't ever receive the call (or it gets through
after attempting to call for multiple minutes).

~~~
lftl
> along with fake ringing that companies including T-Mobile do to make it seem
> like the call is being connected to these high cost areas, meanwhile the
> person your calling doesn't ever receive the call

Interestingly enough T-Mobile has started giving me a notice before calls to
some of these providers saying that I'll be charged 1 cent a minute for the
call.

~~~
StudentStuff
T-Mobile claims they are only doing this on traffic pumped numbers that cost
them significantly more than that to call, but from the little I've looked
into it they're charging this fee on paid conference call numbers that cost
$0.002/min to call in the ratedecks I've checked (after doing an LRN DIP of
course).

I've reached out to T-Mobile's business team repeatedly on an account that I'm
a POC on to get a full list of surcharged numbers, but they are unwilling to
disclose this basic information. This kind of stuff is what keeps businesses
on Sprint and Verizon, at least they know their NANPA calls will get delivered
reliably without surprise surcharges!

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misterprime
Clever, but it still sounds like it wouldn't add up to that much. They only
make a small amount when it connects to a user connected through a small phone
company right? Based on this description connecting someone on AT&T in NYC to
Verizon in LA wouldn't result in any revenue.

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coderholic
It sounds like they get ~$0.04/min for every user. I bet that adds up!

~~~
samspenc
Back of the envelope calculation:

Avg of 30 min conference calls x say 1 million users per month = $1.2 million
a month, or $14.4 million a year

