VOIP Company Blocking Calls in Intercarrier Dispute
VoIP provider magicJack is blocking some calls to its customers, in what is apparently a dispute over special access, said news reports and an industry source. Callers to magicJack customers get a recorded message: “Your phone carrier has routed this call improperly. This call is being identified as a local call, and it should be identified as a long distance call. To complete this call, please call your carrier’s customer service number.” Alternatively, the message says customers can call into a conference line to reach their party.
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Complaints have popped up on magicJack Web sites and other Internet forums, such as 800notes.com. It’s not clear whether anyone has lodged a complaint with the FCC. Officials at the commission’s Enforcement and Consumer Affairs bureaus couldn’t be reached for comment.
Officials at VocalTech Communications, which bought magicJack, couldn’t be reached for comment. But if magicJack is hoping to address intercarrier compensation problems, it’s a risky strategy, Executive Director Glenn Richards of the Voice on the Net Coalition told us. Richards, who represents several VOIP providers, said the FCC “isn’t likely to shine on” a carrier taking matters into its own hands: “They don’t like freelancing."
The commission is in the midst of a broad reconsideration of the intercarrier compensation system in carrying out its National Broadband Plan. An item was tentatively put on December’s meeting agenda but has been put off so Chairman Julius Genachowski can instead wrestle with net neutrality (CD Nov 26 p1).
MagicJack will be familiar to anyone watching late-night infomercials. The small device plugs into customers’ USB ports and is often hawked by its inventor, Dan Borislow. The company was founded in 2007, nearly a decade after Borislow retired from Tele-Save, a company he started in the late 1980s to resell access to AT&T long distance. At its peak in the late 1990s, Tele-Save was valued at more than $2 billion. VocalTech acquired magicJack this year and the company expects to turn a profit in the third quarter, according to a VocalTech news release. VocalTech said last week it was achieving better-than-expected revenue and could close the year with as much as $125 million in pro forma revenue.