Have you read the whole story? I don't think the phone company is doing anything wrong.

Think about it. If someone figured out how to run their bandwidth through your hosting service, then offered something like Youtube using your bandwith, how long would it take you to stop that?

You would look like the bad guy for blocking the service.

It's a straight up scam, there are something like 100 local telcos in IA. It wouldn't be that hard to buy one of the smaller companies with say a couple thousand customers. Add some unethical business practices and there you go.

It is a pretty gray area.

I definitely side on FreeCconferenceCall.com and the Iowa telcos, though.

The FCC says that rural telcos can charge higher termination rates to cover their increased costs of stringing more miles of phone lines per customer and the carriers play the laws of averages to keep their margins. Even though the CLECs (local carriers) involved with FreeConferenceCall are in rural areas, their termination rates are higher for the explicit intent of splitting the difference with FreeConferenceCall, not to cover the increased cost of operation in a rural setting. In the legal setting of Cingular vs the IOWA CLECs; Cingular will win because they have better lawyers even though a case could be made for each side (what they are doing is legal within a FCC loophole but their intent was not what the FCC had in mind). Cingular can block any number they choose though, as long as it is in the T's and C's of their contract with their customers.

Too bad for freeconferencecall users.

Mesenbrink, You have it all backwards

AT&T as a IXC is not paying the LEC for access to their network not the other way around.

AT&T is charging companies to give them access to the LEC's and then AT&T doesn't pay the LEC but keeps the money.

Cingular (AT&T) is blocking calls which is illegal see the FCC rulings at blog.freeconferencecall.com

As far as it being a straight up scam - can you expand on that because it is perfectly legal to do what freeconferencecall.com does

That's too bad. I work for a tiny company (only 6 employees) and we all telecommute. These free conference calls are a lifesaver, and we use them on a weekly basis.

That said, it is less of a scam and more of somebody figuring out a loophole that took forever to be noticed by the people that were affected by it. A scam would be if they take your money and you get nothing in return. They are taking the carriers money and giving their users a "free" conference call.

I imagine this is going to go through lawsuits and whatnot, and eventually settled in a back room deal.