Every week ATL gets calls from people complaining that they are getting called by a toll-free number and they want it stopped.  The toll-free number is showing up on their caller ID.  It is difficult to explain to people not in the industry (and sometimes to people in the industry) that a toll-free number can’t make an outgoing call and so it is not calling them.  This practice, known as “spoofing”, exploded a couple of years ago when low-cost devices were introduced, which made it very easy for anyone to “spoof” their Caller ID.

I have been irritated about this issue for a long time and, apparently, Congress got irritated, too.  I appreciate Michelle Wood, from Compliance Solutions, giving me a heads up on this.  Last year Congress passed and, President Obama signed into law, the Truth in Caller ID Act, which prohibited caller ID “spoofing with harmful or fraudulent intent” and directed the FCC to adopt rules implementing the Act.  Friday the FCC issued the new rules.  Under these new rules:

· Violators are subject to up to a $10,000 fine for each violation or three times that amount for each day of continuing the violation, to a maximum of $1 million for any continuing violation.

· The FCC may assess fines against entities it does not traditionally regulate and they can do this without first issuing a Citation.

· The FCC can impose penalties under this act more readily than it can under other provisions of the Communications Act.

Under the Truth In Caller ID Act, callers are still permitted to alter caller ID information if their purposes are not harmful or fraudulent.  For example, domestic violence shelters may have important reasons for not revealing the actual number of the shelter and doctors responding to after-hours messages from patients may choose to transmit their office numbers rather than their cell phone numbers.

Hooray to the Congress, the President, and the FCC!  ATL’s first action, based on this Act, will be to immediately let our clients know when we have received a call about a spoofing incident.  In many cases ATL’s clients are carriers or resellers so we will ask them to contact their client.  If ATL gets a second call we will disconnect the toll-free number until we have been notified of the resolution of the situation.

I hope other RespOrgs will follow suit on this.

For the entire Public Notice: http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2011/db0623/DOC-307891A1.pdf

I need to take a break from vacation writing for a bit if business.  The 800/SMS restructuring committee, being run by the BOCs, is a little stalled.  In March when the BOCs and SMS2011 each met with the FCC, SMS 800 said they wanted to have a new board in place within six months.  The BOCs said they would get it done by the end of the year.  Since the difference in the times we were looking at was not completely out of line, those of us from SMS 2011, who had been selected to be on the restructuring committee, decided we should go forward and hope for the best.

Things looked good initially, although some of us felt that the survey process was not the best use of time.  The first meeting was April 11 and the survey was done fairly quickly.  However, when we were called back together on May 4 to hear the results, there were no results!  The consulting firm reported they had no results because “there was not enough time to get the results managed”.  This was an online survey so I am certain the software would have spit out at least the number of responses there were to specific questions.  Now the consultant will be tied up and the next meeting isn’t until May 25.  This puts our first look at the survey results out almost six weeks from the first meeting.  Since there are only 109 survey participants this seems excessive.

I am crossing my fingers that this isn’t the beginning of continuing delays that prove participation in the BOC controlled process was a mistake.  When SMS 2011 requested that the FCC move the process to the NANC, our only concern was they might be too slow!

After a few days here you get into the rhythm of the place.  First, you have to remind yourself that you are on vacation.  You don’t ever need to be in a hurry and sitting and doing nothing is not only allowed, it’s the whole idea!  Second, you learn to plan your day around what you now know:  you don’t have water from the time you get up until some random time in the afternoon because of the construction going on behind the condo; you have great, fast internet until about 4:00PM and then it is sketchy; there is a reason that Latin America’s take a siesta during the hottest part of the day.  But, the most important thing we have learned is this: if you want to drink with monkeys overhead in the trees, you go to the bar at 5:00PM when they come out but before it gets too dark (and/or you have too much to drink) to see them.

We are really looking forward to tomorrow.  Tom and I love to fish and we go frequently at home.  We don’t like “sports fishing” – none of that “catch and release” stuff for us.  Our favorite part is catching the fish, taking them home and eating them!  Luis and Maria have made arrangements with a local fisherman, who has a small boat, to take us fishing in the bay right by where we are staying.  It will be very different (and fun) to fish someplace where, if you get too hot, you can dive into the water without freezing.  And, hopefully it will be “catching” as well as “fishing”!

For the ATL staff:  We are leaning towards the monkeys made out of coconuts with glasses on (yes, it’s an inside joke.)

These blogs are going to be sort of a first for me.  I have been criticized because I never blog about anything but business so, if you like those blogs, you may not want to read these.

Tom and I are in Costa Rica for almost two weeks.  This is huge for us.  In the 22 years we have been married, we have only had one vacation longer than a week and that was about five years ago.  Before we arrived in Chicago to change planes for the East Coast one of our kids got suspended from school another got caught driving the family car, of course not 16 yet, so we gave up traveling for a while!

We arrived in Costa Rica on Wednesday, May 4th.  A really great client and friend of ours loaned us his condo in Coco Beach.  It’s a great little town right on Coco Bay.  The condo is within  walking distance of the downtown area and the beach is right out the front entrance.

The first afternoon didn’t go too well. Tom and I had just spent sixteen hours en route and had had little sleep and little to eat.   But, we were anxious to see the sites and totally ignored the fact that, as we were landing, they announced that it was 90 degrees outside!  We changed into shorts and T-shirts and headed out to find a margarita and some food.  Remember, we live where it hasn’t yet been more than 55 degrees this year and at an altitude of 4000’ with no humidity.

Needless to say, by the time we got to the restaurant area, I had become, as my daughter used to quote when she was three, a “btcih” (wonder where she heard that!!), threatening Tom that if he didn’t find me some water and food immediately I would pass out right where we were.  Then we discovered that Tom only had a credit card with him and the first couple restaurants didn’t take credit cards.  When we finally sat down I was too sick to eat and had no interest in a Margarita.  A memorable way to start our first vacation in such a long time!

We took a cab back to our air-conditioned condo, went for a cooling swim and then felt ready to start again.  We’ll pay attention to the weather reports from here on!

More to come ….

How fast should your numbers be ported from one RespOrg to another?

The tariff that all RespOrgs are charged to abide by says the following:

“The current Resp Org will release the toll-free subscriber’s SMS/800 records to the receiving (new) Resp Org within two (2) days of the receipt of the request…”  How long does it take you to port numbers?  Last quarter ATL ported 87% of our customer’s numbers with 48 hours and 98% within 72 hours, so yes, we are not yet in FCC compliance, but that’s our goal.  All we need is the cooperation of every other RespOrg.

How many carriers can originate traffic throughout North America?

Four; AT&T, Level 3, Sprint, and Verizon (the 0222 CIC code).  The other Verizon CIC codes, Qwest, Global Crossing, and Matrix have it almost covered.  I guess with Level 3’s purchase of Global Crossing things may change.  The bottom line is everyone else is reselling some of their network off the Carrier Identification Code (CIC) routing of these carriers.

Why would a RespOrg Outsource their work to another RespOrg?

The cost of being a RespOrg work is heavily affected by scale and experience.  Even large RespOrgs have found it much less expensive to outsource their work to ATL while keeping their RespOrg ID and identity.  Besides, they get much faster revenue due to our porting expertise.

How can you fix a toll free network outage in minutes?

This is perhaps one of the best kept secrets.  By setting up multi-carrier routing before any kind of outage, natural disaster or network issue, a company has protected itself from losing their client’s or their own valuable toll free calls.  As ATL demonstrated in Hurricane Katrina, toll free traffic can be recovered in minutes, even if the disaster is at the calling end.  Why spend thousands to duplicate networks into your building only to have the network fail where your customers or clients are?  If you are a government entity or an insurance company it is more likely the problem will be at the callers end.

I didn’t realize I never answered this after the blog.  I did answer it in the newsletter, but I guess I can’t expect everyone to read everything I write.

LADWAB is an acronym for “Like a dog with a Bone.”  Like the name ATL, LADWAB has a long history but a great story.  As a new, young business person I was excited as I walked across the stage to receive an award from Ted Saenger, then the CEO of Pacific Bell.  I held my breath as Mr. Saenger turned to the audience and said, “Aelea is like a dog with a bone.”  While he meant it kindly as recognition of the determination I applied then and still apply to every customer, it always stuck as a strange description to be used in front of 500 people.  Many years later it is still considered ATL’s foundation for customer service.  Every employee is measured on LADWAB on their appraisals.  So now besides using NASC and CIC as verbs with your reps, you can use, “Have you LADWAB’d that?”

On February 24, 2011, the FCC filed a Declaratory Ruling stating that “RespOrgs may not transfer toll free numbers directly from one entity to another without Commission approval.”  This ends the common practice in the toll free industry of allowing an end user to approve releasing a number to another end user. 

I was discussing a separate issue with the FCC Staff last summer and we started talking about number “negotiations.”  Since I am supposed to one of the experts, “Oregon RespOrg goddess”, as one of my client’s put it, I was embarrassed when I had to admit to the FCC that ATL did negotiations in some cases.  I have always understood the end-user control rule so I had felt that if an end-user wanted to release a number to another end-user it was OK.  Besides, it was such a common practice that I hadn’t really thought it through.  The FCC staffers told me in no uncertain terms that it was not allowed.   ATL stopped the practice and we have put up with complaints from an array of RespOrgs ever since.

I see this ruling as good news and bad news.  The good news is that it will be a way to abruptly respond to the myriad people who contact us every week because they want one of our numbers.   When you have more than a million toll free numbers under your RespOrg ID, this becomes a constant annoyance and takes time away from my reps handling their customer’s needs.  It could help manage the growing fraud issues.

The bad news is it makes it impossible to help companies with valid problems.  If a company misprints a number on their stationary and the current end user doesn’t really care about that number, we have always tried to help.  But now the poor misprint company has to go to the FCC to request that the number be moved.  I wonder how fast the FCC is going to handle these situations?  Where does one even go in the FCC to put in the request?  I am hoping to find the answers to these questions and share them with you.

I have been very lax about updates on SMS 2011, but between going to DC for the FCC meeting, working on SMS 2011, and a great Comptel show, I got a little overwhelmed.  So here is where SMS 2011 stands.

After the March 1^st meeting it seemed like the FCC was set on turning the handling of a transition team to replace the current SMS management over to the North American Numbering Committee (NANC).  They told us that this was the only process they had and it would be faster to do that than invent a new process.  Although we weren’t wild about the idea because the NANC has a reputation for being slow, at least a NANC subcommittee would mean that all participants were equals.

SMS 2011 decided to make one more attempt to get the current BOC organization to work with them.  The BOC chair said she wanted that too, but then announced a call for the industry that made no mention that there was another proposal for the transition and positioned them as being charged by the FCC with the transition plan.  The call announcement did say that the BOCs would be asking for some volunteers to give input.  SMS 2011 responded to the BOCs asking if they would be willing to let the volunteer group select their own chair and whether or not information would be shared so everyone would be on equal footing.  A copy of these questions was also sent to the FCC.  I didn’t hear back from either the BOC group or the FCC.  Once again before the call I contacted the FCC to ask if they would make some kind of decision prior to the call, but I didn’t even get a return call.  In the meantime the BOCs moved forward with the call and it was not until almost the end of the call where they allowed questions.  I asked if they had been given the responsibility to be the transition team and they had to admit that they hadn’t.

The BOCs are using a consulting firm called the Taylor Group which has selected a group of nine to work on a survey that will go out to all the RespOrgs.  We don’t know how many volunteers or how the selection was made, but I received some e-mails from others that volunteered.  The good news is they did include three people from SMS 2011.  The bad news is that SMS 2011 had suggested that taking time for a survey really didn’t make any sense.  The entire RespOrg community had been given a chance to be on a call in January and again in March and if they didn’t participate, they probably didn’t care.  Also, the survey is intended to ask detailed questions about board elections and qualifications, things that would be better handled in a small, involved small group instead of a survey.  Again SMS 2011 sent a copy to the FCC and again – nothing.  This group will meet on Monday. 

The result is that the BOCs are still calling all the shots.  Things are moving and that is a good thing, but with nothing coming out of the FCC the BOCs are taking the view that they have the power to control everything because the FCC has not said otherwise.  I am also inclined to suspect, though I don’t know for sure, that all of us are paying for things like the survey and the Taylor Group out of our $.0966 per number per month whether or not we like the direction.  The FCC has an ideal opportunity right now to have the NANC charge this group of volunteers with the responsibility for a transition plan.  Unfortunately it would be better to just let this group do it as an industry group, but then the FCC would have to make it clear that the BOCs are just participants like everyone else and let the group select their own leadership.  In the meantime we keep getting reminded by the BOCs that they have met again with the FCC and again at our expense.

 In Monday’s blog about the FCC meeting I mentioned the three Bell Operating Companies (BOCs) had presented their own transition proposal to the FCC.  Here is a little more detail.  In January I had gathered a group of companies to start preparing a proposal for the transition.  The FCC had already told me that they were open to this, so I invited some RespOrgs, a couple management DSMI people, and the board members from the current SMS/800, Inc. (which I am going to call the BOCs for this blog). My purpose was to take a proposal to the FCC that had already been widely agreed on by the industry.  (For those of you that are a little behind on this you can see a description of SMS/800, Inc. on the proposal attached to my last blog and DSMI is the business management that runs SMS, including the contract with Sykes for the Help Desk.)

We had two participants from DSMI and one of the BOC board members on our calls designing the proposal.  I had been told during this period that the BOCs were going to take their own proposal, but these three continued to work with us.  On February 8 the BOCs took their proposal to the FCC.  They shared the proposal with us the next day and then told us that they were no longer going to participate with us.  They also ordered DSMI not to participate.  The DSMI people had not only been participating, but had accepted the invitation to go to the FCC with us, but since they work for the BOCs, they had no choice but to do as ordered.  After they exited the call the rest of us reviewed the reasons they gave for pulling out and agreed they made no sense.

In our meeting with the FCC we asked if they had suggested that these groups no longer participate.  Not only did the FCC staff say no, they said that things would have been so much easier if the industry had come with only one proposal.  We repeated that we agreed and had hoped for that too.  No one in the room, not the FCC staff nor our group, could come up with why the BOCs made the decision they did even after our giving the reasons the BOCs had given us. 

So we are all left with the question, “Why would the BOCs do that.”  If the FCC orders a more representative group work on the transition, and it is my opinion they will, all that the BOCs accomplished was to take what could have been a simple request to the FCC and turned it into a much longer more complicated process.  Hmm, maybe I’ve got something there.

The FCC meeting to present the proposal to change the management of the toll free industry is less than a week away. We need the industry to speak up to support this proposal. The three Bell Operating Companies have filed their own proposal stating that the transition should planned by just the three of them.

To be included on the list of companies supporting the proposal for a more widespread industry involvement in this change we need you to follow the instructions below.

Go to your browser and put in
http://groups.google.com/group/sms800NewManagement
• Join the group
• Then to post your comment you send an e-mail to sms800NewManagement@googlegroups.com. That will send a copy to the members of the group and post it.

Your comments don’t need to be long. All you have to say is that you support SMS 2011’s proposal and that we need to get this done now.

Thank you to all of you that have already posted