North American Network Operators Group
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Re: New N.Y. Law Targets Hidden Net LD Tolls

  • From: Stephen Sprunk
  • Date: Thu Aug 18 14:18:18 2005 
Thus spake "Robert Bonomi" <[email protected]>

*NOT* "other people's fraud".  Just when you have 'intra-LATA' toll
charges for some numbers within a single area-code.  If the user is
on one side of the area-code, and the provider's POP is on the far
side of it, you can have a what appears to be a 'local' number, that
does incur non-trivial per-minute charges.  Without knowing _where_
a particular prefix is, you can't tell whether there will be toll charges
for that call, or not, from any given call origin.
That's why some states (e.g. Texas) require that all toll calls be dialed as 1+ _regardless of area code_, and local calls cannot be dialed as 1+. If you dial a number wrong, you get a message telling you how to do it properly (and why).

Sure, this is a little confusing for out-of-towners, but it makes it impossible to accidentally dial a toll call when you think you're dialing a local one, which is the reason the PUC decreed it several decades ago. Apparently NY is just now catching up with rednecks from the 70s.

S

Stephen Sprunk "Those people who think they know everything
CCIE #3723 are a great annoyance to those of us who do."
K5SSS --Isaac Asimov