Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Blocking Calls to Iowa

This blog post is the first I am hearing that Qwest, Sprint and Cingular are blocking calls to Iowa, land of the FreeConference call. If you Google 'blocking calls freeconference', you will see many blog posts and articles about it. This headline caught my eye: "FreeConference-Telco Spat a Nonprofit Headache" From Democracy in Action, on March 18, 2007. Granted it is an arbitrage play, but then that is what most of telco is about. Well, that and patent disputes.

2 comments:

Peter Radizeski said...

ePluribusMedia has a lengthy discourse about the Iowa call blocking, including pointing out that while the rural ILECs in Iowa may be leveraging a loophole in Inter-Carrier Comp, they are not doing anything illegal.

"Attorney Jonathan E. Canis offers a more blunt assessment: "the law in this area is 100% clear. Carriers cannot block traffic as a way to settle disputes." Canis is a partner and telecommunications expert with Kelley, Drye & Warren LLP in Washington, DC, the firm representing the Iowa LECs."

Peter Radizeski said...

Can ILECs block calls it doesn't like? See the article at DSLReports?