Now that AT&T is taking over the world again, maybe we can get them to stop ripping off the soldiers in Iraq. From the (cleverly named!) Fractals of Change blog (h/t Jeff Jarvis):
It’s bad enough that they overcharge domestic customers but we have alternatives. The soldiers don’t because, according to The Prepaid Press, AT&T has an EXCLUSIVE contract to put payphones in PBXes in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, you ask, can’t the soldiers get cheap calling cards to call the US? No! Because AT&T is using (abusing!) its position as monopoly supplier of payphones to block the 800 numbers necessary to use nonAT&T calling cards.
This blocking is illegal in the US but, AT&T told our friend Gene Retske, editor of The Prepaid Press, the rules are different in Iraq. Right.
The soldiers could probably call cheaper if they used Iraqi pay phones. But, assuming there are any working payphones on the streets of Iraq, it’s still not a good idea for American soldiers to be standing on the corners talking on them. That’s why there are phones in PBXes. Too bad the soldiers have to pay $.21/minute to call home on them.
The wholesale rate for calls to the US is less than one cent a minute. Skype charges about 1.5 cents RETAIL to call the US from anywhere in the world. You can buy prepaid cards almost anywhere in the world to call the US for less than two cents a minute. AT&T charges soldiers in Iraq twenty-one cents.
You can fill out a form to contact AT&T here. Give them your area code – or mine, 310, and under “Topic” select ‘Products and Services’ and ask them if this is true, and if so let them know what you think of this.
Or simply read the comments section and the pathetic subsequent attempts to gloss over the objections.
But if this post is some attempt to dispel the doubts of the doctrinaire Dems posting here then kudos! A knee-jerk, emotional response to half a story should go quite far in that regard.
If you read the two followup posts on the FoC site, I’d hardly call his comments “a pathetic attempt to gloss over objections” and as a telco executive, the blogger there is just obviously clueless…or maybe not.
A.L.
Funny. I would say completely ignoring the soldier who is actually in Iraq stating that they do in fact have choices is pathetic. He can flood his blog listing his credentials til the cows come home but it won’t change the fact that he responded to his comments section in subsequent posts REAFFIRMING his erroneous contention despite firsthand testimony that he is wrong. But maybe the odds favor the benighted and both you and Fractals missed the comment so I’ll quote it in its entirety:
Enjoy.
Yes, I saw that comment, as well as the blogger’s claim that others had different experiences.
So this poses an interesting fact-based question – Gene (blogger at Foc) states that his contacts in Iraq (kids of friends) can’t use VOIP (2 of the 3 cheaper options listed) because outside major bases, the bandwidth isn’t there.
Anyone want to chime in on this?
And, again, what’s the issue with requiring AT&T to make their lines available to non AT&T calling cards?
A.L.
So, did you notice there were questions about the accuracy of the post before or after you started with this:
Just curious. Because both you and the Fractals blog stated unequivocally that AT&T is ripping off the troops. Now I know it’s common practice for people to rely on hysterics and emotion to gin up a cause for which people will fight but you discredit yourself with such strident language.
By the way, looking over blogs for about 3 minutes turned up this which links to this. Maybe, just maybe, there are some more authoritative on this subject than a part-time novelist and former VoIP exec(on livejournal no less! THA HORRA!). But I will note that you guys really, really care. And at the end of the day that is all that matters….
Let me go ahead and apologize for my harsh tone. I’ve been lurking at WoC for as long as I can remember and very rarely comment(good policy considering, eh?). This post was so out of character for this blog I got carried away. I wouldn’t want to pile on after all the crap you’ve taken the last few months, AL. But I did so…sorry.
I suspect that AT&T got their contract through a deal with service MWR (Morale, Welfare, and Recreation). They have done this for years, with inflated prices, as a way for MWR to gain some income to cover unfunded recreation costs which the services cannot cover with appropriated funds. This is the entire rationale for the PX/BX system.
21 cents a minute is still a much better rate than the 50 cents a minute AT&T hooked us up for in the Balkans. The situation there was much the same, great facilities and services in the larger camps and the smaller outlying FOBs didn’t have much for recreation and almost non-existent communication.
For what its worth, AT&T has had the exclusive contract for navy ships for years, I fixed the machines that sold thier phone cards back in 96.
AT&T “sailor phones” are all over navy ships.
Email has pretty much put them out of business at sea, in 96 there was a line for them, 2000-2003 I noticed nobody using them.
They have ripped off the military for years.
They (AT&T) called me the other day:
“We can save you money”
“no you cant”
“Sure we can, we can beat any plan you have”
“Can you offer unlimited calling in the US and Canada for 19.99 a month”
“No, are you using one of those internet thingys?
“Yes”
“You’re right, we cant beat that”
“I know, goodbye”
The traditional telecom companies are going the way of the buggy whip. They are exlpoiting anything they can right now.
CWO3
Frontinus thanks for the catch. It’s good to see that someone took the time to fact check this bogus story before it got spread too far.
Sorry, Thorley, but not at all clear this is “bogus”.
The sites Frontinus links to support the notion that a) AT&T cards cost $0.21/min; the alternative in the linked site – “AAFES cards are available worldwide, at any AAFES retail location, through the AAFES catalog or at aafes.com. Non-military friends, family members and loved ones may purchase them here. AAFES prepaid phone cards are welcomed at any of the 30 call centers AAFES operates in the OIF/OEF region. There are currently five centers in Iraq, eight in Afghanistan and 19 in Kuwait.”
Yup eight sites in Iraq where cheap calls are avalable.
A.L.
Perhaps understanding the telecommunications infrastructure would help shed some light on the issues. Everything starts with the LEC’s (local exchange carriers such as Verizon and Bell Atlantic in the US). The LEC’s are effectively monopolies that provide your local service. They own the wire that goes from the CO (central office) to your home. The alternate local service providers are just resellers of that local infrastructure. They own their own switch but they do not own the wire to the curb. A small nit, the CO switch is not a PBX (private branch exchange), they are entirely different animals. As little as 10 years ago the LEC’s connected to each other through a small number of long haul carriers, primarily ATT, MCI, and Sprint. There are now a much larger pool of long haul carriers (mostly regional in scope) in the US which is not relevant to the situation in Iraq. Like the LEC’s, the long haul carriers own the cabling physical infrastructure. This is important, most of the long distance carriers do not own any of the long hall cabling (i.e. fiber), they lease bandwidth at wholesale rates from companies like ATT and resell it. The same is true if you have a non-traditional LEC as your local carrier, they simply lease the wire from your local LEC. If you buy your long distance service from a reseller the call is routed from your LEC to the resellers switch. The reseller routes it through the leased bandwidth from one of the big boys like ATT to the called parties LEC. To claim ATT is “blocking” other long distance carriers is presuming there are other carriers who have set up switches and leased bandwidth from whoever owns the cabling infrastructure. IOW, you can’t block what isn’t there. I don’t know if 21 cents a minute is unreasonable. I do know that capitol costs of construction of the network are paid in the early years. In the US the low cost of long distance is due partially to the fact that the capitol cost of laying thousands of miles of fiber has been recovered. Any comparisons of the well-developed infrastructure of the US with war torn Iraq is in my view quite ignorant.
Nothing I linked debunks this story but it certainly makes all the posturing by Fractals and AL look, umm, premature at the very least. Could it be that AT&T is a war profiteer(and that’s what’s alleged afterall)? Sure. Is it more likely Fractals/AL got all bent out of shape for nothing? Yup. But god forbid anyone puts an update or correction in the post. Can’t have those pesky nits clogging our hate machines.
frontinus – bring on some facts (as I asked for in #4) and I’ll update the post…why criticize me for not updating the post when there’s nothing new to update it with?
A.L.
I guess I’m hoping against hope. There was enough information on Fractals alone to warrant a correction BEFORE you even made your contribution to the mob. You really can’t have missed that.
Fractals stated the troops had zero choice. He was wrong. He made up some bullshit effort to figure the 21 cents per minute number while it’s clearly stated in the links I posted. He said AT&T had a monopoly never mentioning Segovia. He said AT&T was blocking 800-number access for nefarious reasons ignoring everything else.
But if you feel comfortable hitching your wagon to misleading and inflammatory rhetoric then knock yourself out. The question mark in the title is a nice touch though. Ask your readers a question then answer it yourself with an emphatic YES! Well, thank you, Marv Albert but hopefully people look beyond both you and Fractals for the rest of the story. Sad that they have to but that’s your call. Most people would step lightly before throwing the war profiteer tag around but I see your credentials say “liberal” so just ignore that swirling haze…it’s just the rest of us revolving around you.
frontinus, you’re flatly misreading the facts as presented and Fractal’s post.
It’s certainly true that in some places in Iraq, VOIP or cheaper alternatives are available – in eight places, as set out in the link you provided as being magesterial. This suggests pretty strongly that there are a number (how many, I’d have no idea) of places where our troops are based and a) AT&T has the phone monopoly and b) the alternatives aren’t available.
The answer would be relatively easy – for AT&T to open it’s phones to competitors by allowing the use of other calling cards. Very few ‘calling card’ companies own any infrastructure at all; they buy in bulk, resell in detail and try and make a spread.
So the operating question is in how many places no alternatives are available, and what the technical (and to a lesser extent, business) issues are in AT&T allowing the use of other calling cards.
I appreciated your earlier apology for tone; I’m always more than happy to have a debate around facts – so why not provide some? If you think I’m misreading the information provided, assemble it into an argument and make it.
If you have new facts, as I’d requested, bring them to the table.
In either case, a little more humility would be a really good thing.
A.L.
bq. bring on some facts (as I asked for in #4) and I’ll update the post…why criticize me for not updating the post when there’s nothing new to update it with?
I thought I did in post #12. Perhaps I should try again.
bq. And, again, what’s the issue with requiring AT&T to make their lines available to non AT&T calling cards?
The issue is another company supplying the switch to actually process a call. I don’t see any proof that there are any other long distance vendors. Again, you cannot block something that doesn’t exist. The 800 service numbers, that are used to access an alternate long distance carrier, are not all that different from dialing 1010NNN from your home phone. All the 800 number does is route you to the alternate long distance carriers switch from your LEC. IOW, when you use one of these 800 numbers the call does not go through the long distance carrier normally assigned to that line. If, for example, you had ATT as your long distance provider but called a 800 number that belonged to Sprint, your call would go from your LEC directly to Sprint. ATT would have no part in the processing or transport of that call. What you are suggesting Al, is that ATT should process and pass a call to another long distance carrier state side and not get paid for the largest leg of the trip.
Greg, as noted (and until someone corrects my understanding); there are two kinds of shared services; in one, the provider has actual equipment and a real network that the call gets routed to, and in the other, they simply purchase capacity in bulk and resell it.
The first doesn’t exist (although I’ll bet there are providers with switches in, say Kuwait or Dubai); the second does, and AT&T has elected not to cooperate with them, in ways that local Iraqi telcos appear to (which is why we’re told you can use a card from an Iraqi pay phone, but not one on a US base).
So sorry – I’m not yet convinced.
A.L.
How am I misrepresenting “facts” when they’re not even facts?
I didn’t provide an argument because I thought it clear enough to any reasonable person that both you and Fractals had jumped the gun. It seems that you’re the only one here unable to grasp that which isn’t entirely surprising. So, just for you…
Fractals:
Really? Guy from Iraq: “My options to call home are….” But it’s nice to see you now concede that possibly “some alternatives” is the more correct(ion). Baby steps.
Segovia? Addendum acknowledging the guy from Iraq’s post? The narrative can abide neither.
Declarative. Without qualifiers. Aren’t those fun!
Of course, they can’t do it with AT&T’s competitors so naturally dropping quarters is the answer.
An appeal to authority. How quaint.
Yes, it can’t be the fault of the tester. Noooo.
The conspiracy widens!!!!!111
Yeah, it’s not like the Exchange doesn’t publish that number itself. Props to the intrepid reporter, Wayne, for crunching those numbers.
But of course! If they got to one group of congresscritters it stands to reason they got to all of them. War profiteers are just impossible to resist nowadays.
Yes, and how soon after the Legion finds nothing untoward do they become part of the theory? Can’t have the press or blogs informing the citizens. We’ll leave that to another lobby organization and apparently AT&T’s customer service department. Good call.
You again:
Show me that AT&T is the controlling entity when it comes to those decisions and I might agree with you. You seem to accept that premise as a given. Which might be the root cause of the problems we’re having. I can think of more plausible reasons for the closed system and none of them involve a conspiracy to profiteer between the telecoms and government. How about guarding against the type of fraud and abuse mentioned by neither you or Fractals? Does that work? Hrm, alternatives sure are nice. I’m glad I have them in Texas, home to SBC!
I apologized for my tone after I thought I had made my point. Obviously I jumped the gun as well. But fear not…atleast one of us has no qualms about admitting a mistake.
They were brought a while ago and I can’t take credit for that.
I agree. A little more humility and a little less credulity….
This is a little likie talking to a wall – and I’m sure you see it the same way. One last try, and I’ll put this thread aside for a while.
The commenter on Fractal’s post suggests that he has VOIP as well as calling card alternatives to AT&T; he doesn’t say where he is; but let’s presume that some percent of the bases in Iraq have that full array of services (a friend’s son is in Afghanistan doing EOD; he periodically gets to them via satphone or, when he’s at a central base, Skype).
There are also a lot of bases that have PX’s; the question – which no one has presented an answer to – is whether those bases also offer alternatives.
From the cites on Fractal’s blog (which are supported by what I’ve also been told), there are bases where PX’s exist, but IP connectivity is poor (my contact on that wasn’t on whether VOIP worked, but whether someone Over There could receive some large files; he could – but only when he was at a relatively central base with a fat pipe. I’ll presume that the same issue would preclude VOIP). If that’s the case, it’s likely (but not proven) that the phone alternatives available to troops are either AT&T or sat phone.
Your litany of “Congress and the Pentagon didn’t act!” as proof that things are hunky-dory doesn’t remotely fit with the experience of anyone who’s wrestled any issues with either institution – and I’ve wrestled with both.
So…it’s reasonable to presume that there’s an issue.
Your final defense is “well, maybe it isn’t AT&T that are restricting it”; great – let’s find out who and why.
So, to recap – we have conflicting anecdotes over what kinds of services are available to troops, with at least some backing the notion that some troops have (relatively expensive) AT&T phones as their cheapest form of calling home.
Thyere may be cheaper ways, and it’s worth it to have the powers-that-be see if they can be made available to the troops.
A.L.
bq. Greg, as noted (and until someone corrects my understanding); there are two kinds of shared services; in one, the provider has actual equipment and a real network that the call gets routed to, and in the other, they simply purchase capacity in bulk and resell it.
I am really trying Al but being a class A geek my ability to explain in a coherent way is sometimes lacking. Try to think of it as a tiered system. The calling cards are more a marketing tool that is up one layer above the service provided by the real long distance companies (those with switches). The 800 number is just a code used to connect to a real providers switch. Also, 800 numbers are not universal. The company I work for has one that only works if you call within the state. There are national 800 numbers that will not work out of country. I have encountered calling cards that would not work in Canada for example. In addition, 800 numbers are part of the NANP (North America Number Plan), other parts of the world have their own numbering plans that can be quite different. Although many use some form of 800 for toll free calls, some do not. Even the number of dialed digits is not universal. The fact that 800 numbers don’t work in Iraq is not surprising since 800 numbers don’t work in Japan either. I suppose it is possible that the military is set up as an extension of the NANP, in which case 800 numbers would be valid. If the ATT network is being set up as part of the Iraqi telephone infrastructure it should surprise no one that our 800 numbers don’t work there.
Ok, a little exercise. Read your last post then go back and read your OP. You end up where you should have started.
That doesn’t excuse anything. Just because you have noble aims that doesn’t mean you can demogogue with impunity.
Link
And this is a year after the Defense Department made the unprecedented move of allowing military exchanges to sell prepaid phone cards to anyone wishing to buy them for deployed troops.
which enables even people not otherwise entitled to exchange privileges to buy Military Exchange Global Prepaid Calling Cards for deployed troops
American Red Cross, United Service Organizations, Air Force Aid Society or Fisher House Foundation
The Help Our Troops Call Home program enables the public to tap into an exclusive DoD contract with AT&T that gives troops the lowest per-minute fees for calls placed from AT&T phone centers
If the card is purchased in the United States, the per-minute fees are 21 cents a minute from Iraq, Afghanistan or Kuwait. If the deployed servicemember buys the card overseas, the rates are even lower — 19 cents a minute from Iraq, Afghanistan or Kuwait, Anstey said.
These rates are lower than they were a year ago, Anstey said, and compare to as much as 40 cents per minute charged by some phone-card companies after converting calling units to actual calling minutes.
In addition to low rates, the military prepaid cards don’t expire and aren’t subject to additional charges or connection fees
“The decision to allow the exchange services to work directly with the American public has provided a textbook study in how to safely and effectively support our troops,” she said.
AT&T has donated more than $6 million in prepaid cards to the USO program.
More information about the Military Exchange Global Prepaid Calling Card is available on the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, the Navy Exchange and the Marine Corps Exchange Web sites, or by calling (800) 527-2345.
But don’t let the world get in your way, Sir Bedevere.
I assume that the commo in Iraq has improved since I was there (June ’04-June ’05) but at Camps Liberty and Cuervo we didn’t have voice over IP or DSN phones, and I definetely felt that AT&T was ripping me off at 19 cents per minute. Of course that was the rate on AT&T calling cards sold at the PX–if you used any other type of card (even if it was AT&T) the rate was more like $.60 per minute. It was always discouraging to get a 120 minute phone card from some 5th graders in Duluth…and only get ten minutes of actually talk time, or less. The gesture was certainly appreciated though. But yeah, I did feel that AT&T was trying to rip me off.
Why should soldiers deployed in Iraq have to pay for telephone calls back home *at all*? Surely, providing frequent communication with families back home is the least we can do for those who are fighting our battles.
Why can’t DoD arrange for appropriate leased-line capacity from facilities in Iraq back to a gateway in the US, at which point the calls would enter the US carrier network as domestic L/D traffic? I bet that two or three DS-3s would handle the entire simultaneous (nonoperational) call traffic between Iraq and the US, even if standard PCM were used rather than VOIP.
…its not that simple and maybe some like to take the time to read through this article – it should explain why…
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/telecom/2005-04-13-att-iraq-calling-card_x.htm