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International Telecommunications Routes
Telephone companies in different countries use a variety of international telecoms routes to send traffic to each other. These can be legal (or 'white') routes or other arrangements the industry calls ''grey routes'', ''special carrier arrangements'', ''settlement by-pass'' and other euphemisms. Settlement routes Before the telecoms industry deregulation that started in the 1980s, most telephone companies were owned or regulated by their governments: even countries with many domestic phone companies usually had a regulated international carrier. These carriers used settlement routes to handle traffic between them. For example, BT and the Australian carrier Telstra send each other traffic over a satellite link or by submarine communications cable. Telstra terminate calls to Australians from British callers, while BT terminate calls in the UK from Australians. At the end of the year Telstra and BT add up the traffic, measured in minutes, they have sent each other and settle net: if B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deregulation
Deregulation is the process of removing or reducing state regulations, typically in the economic sphere. It is the repeal of governmental regulation of the economy. It became common in advanced industrial economies in the 1970s and 1980s, as a result of new trends in economic thinking about the inefficiencies of government regulation, and the risk that regulatory agencies would be controlled by the regulated industry to its benefit, and thereby hurt consumers and the wider economy. Economic regulations were promoted during the Gilded Age, in which progressive reforms were claimed as necessary to limit externalities like corporate abuse, unsafe child labor, monopolization, pollution, and to mitigate boom and bust cycles. Around the late 1970s, such reforms were deemed burdensome on economic growth and many politicians espousing neoliberalism started promoting deregulation. The stated rationale for deregulation is often that fewer and simpler regulations will lead to raised level ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grey Route
In telecommunications business, a white route is a route where both source and destination are legal termination. This is opposed to a black route, which is a route that is illegal in both ends. Also common in telecom (especially VoIP) is the term grey route, which defines a route that is legal for one country or the party on one end, but illegal on the alternative end. An example of the white/grey/black trichotomy is often seen in telecom routes from the United States to India. In India, a telecom oligopoly is granted to a few large corporations. Hence, all legal ("white") telecom traffic to the country is subject to the rates imposed by these corporations. To overcome this restriction for the purpose of achieving lower costs for consumers, and to make a profit in the process, many small parties set up VoIP routers in homes and offices around India. Telecom traffic from other countries is sent to these VoIP routers via IP and terminated to the local Indian PSTN. This proce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Telephone Fraud
Phone fraud, or more generally communications fraud, is the use of telecommunications products or services with the intention of illegally acquiring money from, or failing to pay, a telecommunication company or its customers. Many operators have increased measures to minimize fraud and reduce their losses. Communications operators tend to keep their actual loss figures and plans for corrective measures confidential. According to a 2011 survey by CFCA, an industry group created to reduce fraud against carriers, the five top fraud loss categories reported by operators were: * US$4.96 billion – compromised PBX/voicemail systems * $4.32 billion – subscription/identity theft * $3.84 billion – International Revenue Share Fraud * $2.88 billion – by-pass fraud * $2.40 billion – cash fraud Types of frauds Fraud against users by phone companies * '' Cramming'' is the addition of charges to a subscriber's telephone bill for services which were neither ordered nor desired by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Least-cost Routing
In voice telecommunications, least-cost routing (LCR) is the process of selecting the path of outbound communications traffic based on cost. Within a telecoms carrier, an LCR team might periodically (monthly, weekly or even daily) choose between routes from several or even hundreds of carriers for destinations across the world. This function might also be automated by a device or software program known as a least-cost router. Telecoms carriers as suppliers and customers Telecoms carriers often buy and sell call termination services with other carriers. A carrier such as Telewest or France Telecom will be interconnected with other telecoms carriers and might have a number of routing options of different price, quality and capacity to a given country. In the de-regulated EU, these will be licensed alternative operators (e.g. Cable and Wireless / Colt in the UK or Jazztel in Spain) or the ( PTT)'s of other countries, such as T-Systems (Germany), Telefónica (Spain), NTT (Japan) or Te ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arbitrage
In economics and finance, arbitrage (, ) is the practice of taking advantage of a difference in prices in two or more markets; striking a combination of matching deals to capitalise on the difference, the profit being the difference between the market prices at which the unit is traded. When used by academics, an arbitrage is a transaction that involves no negative cash flow at any probabilistic or temporal state and a positive cash flow in at least one state; in simple terms, it is the possibility of a risk-free profit after transaction costs. For example, an arbitrage opportunity is present when there is the possibility to instantaneously buy something for a low price and sell it for a higher price. In principle and in academic use, an arbitrage is risk-free; in common use, as in statistical arbitrage, it may refer to ''expected'' profit, though losses may occur, and in practice, there are always risks in arbitrage, some minor (such as fluctuation of prices decreasing profit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
