A reverse charge call facility is a premium service. That is why you pay a little more for a reverse charge call than if you used your own phone.
Take the following examples of obvious premium services. A ride in a taxi is a premium service. You could take the bus but you need to get to your appointment on time…so you take a cab. And because you use this premium service you pay more to get to your destination than if you decided to use your own car or took the bus.
Another example is a toll road. Sure you can go through twenty sets of lights and stop and start and take an hour and a half to get to you where you are going ….but if you take the toll road then you get there in ten minutes and no stress…but you have to pay the ten bucks to use the toll road. Same as the taxi, the toll road is a premium service.
Usually people who set up premium services of any kind have invested in infrastructure, equipment or resources and they need to get a return on their investment as well as providing a well regarded service to the community.
Reverse charge call operators do the same. There is a significant amount of investment in time and dollars that go into setting up a reverse charge call facility…and it’s a premium service.
A reverse charge call is not like a regular call. A regular call is one way…from Party A to Party B. There are several parts to a reverse charge call. Party A calls a reverse charge service and enters the number he or she wants. This is checked by the management platform. Party A then identifies himself or herself. The call goes to the management platform and from there the Party B number is dialled. Identification and acceptance takes place at the Party B end and then that information goes back to the management platform where the parties are connected. This solutions or telephony architecture is much more complicated than a one way call. Inbound and outbound charges are levied against the operator, billing solutions attract telecom fees and platform management fees are paid. If party B does not accept the call, the costs are directly borne by the operator.
So…a reverse charge call facility is certainly a premium service and when the situation is urgent and necessary how happy are you when you know the number of a reverse charge call service so you can make a call to get assistance. How happy are you when your children know the number to call so they are always in touch…day or night!
William Tys
CEO
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1800 PhoneHome is a new reverse charge call service facilitating reverse charge calls to mobiles and fixed lines. The service is Australia wide and has been operating for nearly two years. 1800 PhoneHome has competitive rates which may be viewed on the website. The service is easy to use and adds to the number of reverse charge call operators in Australia thereby stimulating competition in this industry.
In Australia, from just about any phone (mobile, fixed and payphone) simply dial the toll-free prefix 1800 and then dial the alpha numeric representation PHONEHOME. The number is therefore 1800 746634.
It’s official - identity thieves are getting smarter, as reports from the US suggest that identity fraudsters are using phone records to assist them in gathering personal information.
In what experts are calling “pretexting,” fraudsters are calling the phone companies and posing as the customer, asking for information on their recent calls, ostensibly for billing purposes.
The problem is a potentially major one, as the US National Consumers’ League has issued a warning in its latest monthly magazine.
According to the NCL, your telephone records can reveal a lot about you including your address, the local and long distance numbers dialed from your phone number, and the numbers from which reverse charge calls were accepted. And says the consumer group, mobile phone records can be equally revealing.
By the book, of course, the telcos shouldn’t release this kind of information over the phone. They should verify your ID then offer to mail it out via the post.
But the fraudsters can be quite persuasive.
The $64,000 question is whether BT and the mobile phone companies could be similarly fooled in the UK….
Author: Steve Gold
http://security.itproportal.com/articles/2008/09/16/identity-thieves-are-now-using-phone-records/
“A
collect call in the USA and Canada or
reverse charge call in the UK and other countries (or calling
collect) is a
telephone call in which the
calling party wants to place a call at the
called party’s expense. In the past, collect calls were only possible as an
operator-assisted call, but with the introduction of
computer-based
telephone dialing equipment, it is now possible to place a collect call without using an
operator, which is called
International Freephone Service (IFS) as opposed to
Home Country Direct (HCD). Several companies offer services to place collect calls that compete with local service providers. When the operator’s number is globally unique, i.e. it does not depend on the caller’s country, it is called
Universal International Freephone Number (UIFN).” Source
Wikipedia
William Tys, CEO of 1800 PHONEHOME has a shorter definition. Tys says “… a reverse charge call is simply a call made at the recipient’s expense.”
People usually make reverse charge calls as a last resort call. The call is usually urgent and necessary. For example, a child may have missed the schoolbus or has been left standing at school because someone forgot the pick him or her up. Sometimes it’s adults who have a flat tyre and a flat battery on their mobile phone. In short the calls are usually made when the caller is in a degree of trouble and they need assistance.
The traditional reverse charge call is from a telephone box to a home landline. Plenty of industry dollars are still generated this way. However, telephone boxes are reducing in number and the mobile phone is taking over. No one goes too far these days without their mobile phone in their pocket or handbag. Hence many reverse charge calls are placed to mobile phones Also the mobile phone is becoming the home phone. Many new developments are not incorporating hardwiring for landlines because of wireless and mobile applications. The mobile phone is now becoming the home phone as well.
From a callers point of view a reverse charge call should be able to be made from any phone (fixed or mobile) to any phone (fixed or mobile). Some reverse charge call operators choose to only provide their service to say mobiles. For a full reverse charge call service surely a capable provider should facilitate reverse charge calls to both fixed and mobile phones.
1800 PHONEHOME provides the full service of calls to fixed and mobile phones combined with a very competitive price. Tys says ”…not only do people want some serious competition in the reverse charge call arena but also the full service of calls terminating on fixed and mobile phones…and that’s why 1800 PHONEHOME is here!”
William Tys
CEO
