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David Erickson's Blog Minimize
Author: David Erickson Created: 11/1/2009 4:48 PM
This blog is focused in providing information on topics related to call blocking issues.
Conference Call Etiquette
By David Erickson on 7/27/2010 1:20 PM
With more and more people using conferencing services, there are bound to be social mishaps. Whether you’re on a call with your client, your offshore development team or your company’s other office, there are a few simple rules to follow to prevent serious blunders.
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Introducing Steve: Customer of the Month
By David Erickson on 4/13/2010 12:07 PM
FreeConferenceCall’s Blog just got a little more exciting! Every month, we are going to highlight a new customer who is using our services in an innovative way to create an innovative solution for your business, family or community. We are unveiling this on the blog because this is what we know at FreeConferenceCall.com: it is you the customer who is driving innovation with your needs. We want to highlight your innovation to create solutions.
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Watching the Sausage Get Made
By David Erickson on 4/12/2010 8:43 PM
There’s an old saying you’ve probably heard – Two things you don’t want to see made are laws and sausages. Well, I’d like to add a third to that: phone calls.

Most people think that once you pay for phone service, you just press send and talk. From the perspective of the consumer that’s pretty much true, but your phone call has a more complicated journey ahead of it. Depending on where and when you’re calling, your call could pass through your phone company, a middle-mile carrier, a local exchange carrier and maybe even a major wireless company before reaching your friend Sally’s cell phone. All of those companies in the middle get paid. Not by you directly—you pay your carrier for access, your carrier pays all the other companies along the way for the usage (AKA “access” in telco speak).

Think of it as negotiating a set rate home from the airport. You pay a single price; the cabbie pays all the tolls along the way. Same thing, different pipes.
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Free Conference Call Companies Rally Customers to Protect Services
By David Erickson on 4/7/2010 7:21 PM

Free conference call companies are rallying customers to urge lawmakers and the FCC to not stifle their ability to continue using free conference call services. “We let people know to contact their representatives in Congress that they use the service and don’t want it to go away,” FreeConference.com Chief Financial Officer Mike Placido said in an interview.

The commission continues to get comments on a 2007 rulemaking notice concerning just and reasonable rates for terminating access charges by competitive local exchange carriers mainly located in rural areas. Bells have accused rural LECs of “traffic pumping,” and urged lawmakers and the FCC to look into ending the practice. The House Commerce Committee has collected information from CLECS and interexchange carriers to begin its inquiry (CD Feb 18 p ...

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FIRMS PITCHING FCC IN FAVOR OF CURRENT ACCESS CHARGE REGIME
By David Erickson on 4/5/2010 6:09 PM

A conference call provider and a Native American-owned telco are meeting with FCC officials this week in an effort to convince the agency that it does not have to alter the current access charge regime to encourage broadband service expansion to unserved areas.

Officials with FreeConferenceCall.com and Native American Telecom, LLC argue that the existing fee system can encourage economic development on tribal lands and other rural areas because the money such carriers make from traffic terminating on their networks allows them to invest in infrastructure that they otherwise couldn’t afford.

Gene DeJordy, chief executive officer of Native American Telecom, noted that an affiliate it manages on the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe reservation in South Dakota began offering voice and broadband service to residences and businesses there last year.  But its business model is largely dependent on the use of FreeConferenceCall and other services that use its network to ...

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Interview with Telecommunications Reports
By David Erickson on 1/7/2010 5:29 PM
President of FreeConferenceCall.com, Dave Erickson, was interviewed by Telecommunications Reports, December 18, 2009. Here are excerpts from the interview.
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Dave Erickson's Statement Regarding...
By David Erickson on 11/7/2009 3:07 AM
Dave Erickson's Statement Regarding the Granting of a Temporary Restraining Order which Prevents the Iowa Utilities Board from Seizing Phone Numbers from a Local Carrier.
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David Erickson's Offer to Help Google
By David Erickson on 11/2/2009 3:04 AM
Learn more about it by reading this Ex Parte letter filed with the FCC.
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Google Limits Call Blocking?
By David Erickson on 10/26/2009 12:02 AM
Look at some of last week's headlines: 'Google Says it Will Limit Call Blocking', 'Google Defends, Scales Back Call Blocking' and 'Google Tells FCC it's still Blocking Calls, but fewer of them'
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The courtesy of a work around!
By David Erickson on 10/23/2009 12:01 AM
Re: Google Call Blocking, Traffic Pumping Google says: “Whoops sorry FCC, we fixed that problem we didn’t create. Our intelligent engineers found a work around back at the lab! We are blocking less than 100 phone numbers now (hmmm… how many were you blocking before 101, 102?)
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Archives Minimize

In the News Minimize

VoIP Evolution, "The Top 25 VoIP Advances of 2009," December 29, 2009 (Coverage Link)

 

Kingston Financial Advisors, "For Financial Advisors: A Little Used Marketing Tool With Outsized Advantages," December 28, 2009 (Coverage Link)

 

Post-Bulletin, "Now Dasher, Now Dancer, Now Facebook, Now Twitter," by Bridget Carey, December 24, 2009 (Coverage Link)

 

Smart Products, "Now Dasher, Now dancer, Now Facebook, Now Twitter," December 24, 2009 (Coverage Link)

 

Cool Baby Kid (Facebook Page), "Have your little ones call the North Pole for last minute gift wishing!" December 23, 2009 (Coverage Link)

 

Miami Herald, "Ways to Engage with Santa Digitally," December 23, 2009 (Coverage Link)

 

Seattle Times, "Today’s Kid’s Connect With Santa Through Texts, Tweets," by Bridget Caret, December 23, 2009 (Coverage Link)

 

Miami Herald, "Ways to Engage With Santa Digitally," December 23, 2009 (Coverage Link)

 

Mommies With Cents, "Leave a Message With Santa!" December 21, 2009 (Coverage Link)

 

Lots of finger-pointing in Google Voice battle I wrote a story for today's paper about a free conference call company, FreeConferenceCall.com, that also uses rural numbers and, in exchange for driving call traffic, collects a fee from rural phone carriers. Free conference call lines like his make up a sizable portion of the calls that Google Voice still blocks. Read More...  
 

Pressure on Google over Blocked Calls

“Google shouldn’t be able to tell consumers where they can call and where they can’t,” said David Erickson, president of the Free Conferencing Corp. based in Long Beach, Calif., a company that set up conference calls for President Barack Obama when he was campaigning in 2008. Read More...

Call Between AT&T and FCC Minimize

Customer Comments Minimize
Dave - July, 29, 2010 - 07:59
Hello Alan I have 2 questions for you: 1. As consumers of telecommunications do I or do I not have the ability to call anywhere within the country as long as I am willing to pay the charges associated with calling that destination (even if that destination has a higher rate due to a rural exemption but I am willing to pay that too). 2. Why do you think I am stealing from big corporations when they set the price of service? Dave
Alan - July, 29, 2010 - 05:41
David, david david. You and your supporters should be ashamed of yourselves. If you truly believe that the current loophole you are using to provide this service is ok. While I believe that the current regulations that govern the way telephone services are billed are antiquated and should be updated to the 21st century so that telecommunication services can be billed more fairly, I don't feel that your approach is right. What you are effectively doing is perverting what is equivalent to telecommunications welfare for your own profit. The reason this billing situation exists is to subsidize rural phone service to make it more affordable for those people that LIVE there. If you were to open an apartment complex and fill it with the homeless and sign them up for public assistance allowing them to live there under one condition, that they sign over their public assistance checks to you, there would be an outcry and probably lawsuits from the state. People would not support this because it would feel like you were stealing from them. Now with your model the person being robbed is a big corporation so people don't really care as much as long as they get their cut (free conference calling). Wake up everyone stealing is still stealing and eventually someone has to pay the price. So David, you can continue to pump out your little guy getting taken by the big corporation rhetoric to your minions, but I bet at the end of the day, you, like PT Barnum, are laughing and thinking there truly is a sucker born every minute.
Edith - July, 26, 2010 - 12:05
why i cannot access to free conference call using my magicjack? i also try the one they mentioned to dial but still at no avail. can you update me why?
JOSEPH A - July, 23, 2010 - 06:32
I use magicjack but cannot join any conference. I learnt magicjack has blocked the system. I called them and complained only to be told to contact the conference provider to email them at "2connect magicjack@magicjack.com" My question is why should they block my unlimited call?
Bill - July, 22, 2010 - 06:42
MagicJack is not to blame, neither is any other carrier. "Free" Conference call bills carriers at an obscene rate which was given to the rural carriers in order to connect to distant customers, instead engaging in this scam. The LD carriers are fighting it in court, but meantime charge the wholesale VoIP carriers (magicJack, Google Voice, etc.) even *more* obscene rates as much as 30c/minute. It's a scam. Don't blame Google or MagicJack for the carriers and "free" conference call scamming them.
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