Re: TTY phone fraud and abuse

["Stephen Sprunk" <stephen () sprunk org>]

Thus spake "Suresh Ramasubramanian" <suresh () outblaze com>
> There is another class of people who route calls out from the USA to
> India (or elsewhere) using VOIP, terminate the calls at an unauthorized
> (that is, not run by a licensed telco) exchange in india, and then route
> the calls out through the local pstn or mobile network.
>
> Quite a few of the "call $asian_country for cheap" phone cards you find
> at ethnic grocery stores seem to work on these lines.
>
> The local telco doesn't see a red cent of any settlement charges when
> this happens.  Local telcos are, of course, all against this, and use
> any and every excuse to get these exchanges busted - a procedure that
> typically involves having the local police raid the exchange.

One method that makes raids difficult is that the landing site for these
calls is often a satellite dish (for the international side) combined with
GSM phones (for the local side).  Sure, you can cut off the GSM phones
one-by-one, but new ones are cheap enough that it's like a game of
whack-a-mole.

S

Stephen Sprunk        "Stupid people surround themselves with smart
CCIE #3723           people.  Smart people surround themselves with
K5SSS         smart people who disagree with them."  --Aaron Sorkin