Quote:There is no proper, acceptable commercial or technical reason that any NGN other than 09 should be charged at a higher rate than the normal GN rate of the intitial carrying telco, if revenue sharing (use as covert Premium numbers) were abolished.
Thanks drrdf2 for your response. Although I lack your technical understanding, I too struggle to accept that micro-payments are justified for esentially routing a non-geo to a geo. (Where larger companies want to dynamically move calls around different call centres, then surely these larger companies should foot the bill for this?).
Below, however, I've quoted DonQuixote whose arguments very closely mirror those of the recent FleXtel consultion response.
Quote:Perhaps I can help by making the difference between micropayment and revenue share a bit clearer...
Let look at the traditional financial model of the UK (and international) telecom network using BT as an example, in a typical 0870 call...
Caller --£a--> BTin --£b--> 0870sp --£c--> BTout ---> Called
of course BTin could be replaced by any phone/mobile operator e.g. NTL or Vodafone
and BTout could be different from BTin.
So money flows from left to right, following the call...
£a is paid by Caller (monthly/quarterly bill).
£b is the money paid by BTin to the 0870 service provider, about 5p/min
£c is the money paid to BTout to pay for carrying the call to Caller about 1p
No money is given to Called.
So the NTS company is living off about 4p/min.
£b and £c are micropayments made in the telecoms network.
They are very efficient, because they are made in bulk monthly.
There is little credit risk, so collection costs are very low.
...for the economists amongst us! Cool
£b-£c is the margin needed to pay for the number translation services.
e.g. databases, switches (exchanges), software, webservers, optical fibre, it is not free! cry
Here it comes...
Now add Revenue Share to the end user - Called.
To compete, then 0870sp MUST now pay the Called for every minute of answered time.
Imagine an additional arrow with £d money flowing directly from 0870sp to Called.
£d can be as high as 3p/min!
Clearly Revenue Share pushes up the cost of £b and hence £a.
Now the NTS guys get 5-1-3 = 1p/min (useing full-on revenue share as a bribe).
This post is both comprehensive and persuasive although I'm not sure on the point below that ending revenue sharing will force people to use BT's call diversion ?
Quote:Yep, that'll stop revenue share. Wink
Good one! ...but that means we're back to expensive BT's call diversion charges
(& mobiles too!) or Called pays the NTS operator a lot.
Why?...
Because you have to collect payment to pay for the NTS/Diversion
and that is very, very, expensive -> high collection risk, small bills!
...bad people can disappear without paying!
...BT's argument for retaining so much!
Any further feedback will be appreciated.