The Financial Post reports in its Friday edition that the telcos want regulations to stop traffic pumping, a practice associated with free conference call lines and adult entertainment lines. The Post's Emily Jackson writes that BCE and its Northwestel unit called on the CRTC to create a nationwide standard to deal with the tactic that involves artificially directing call traffic to areas with high termination fees -- the fee a long-distance carrier pays to the local carrier to deliver the call -- and sharing the revenue with the company providing the "free" conference call.
Under Bell's proposed scheme filed with the CRTC, it wants to ban revenue sharing designed to encourage traffic pumping. It would be up to a local carrier to prove it is not traffic pumping or the incoming call carrier would not have to pay them. U.S. regulators have already established similar rules, Bell noted, adding its proposal would help avoid "whack-a-mole" enforcement.
The traffic pumping issue bubbled to the surface late last year when Rogers Communications accused Iristel of working with a call-in radio service to send traffic to the Northwest Territories where termination fees are 40 times higher than the rest of Canada.
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