provided by Star2Billing S.L.

Is there a way for A2Billing to determine that the call came from a pay phone and then to charge a connect charge? Or is everyone just charging a connect charge for all toll free calls, presuming that it comes from a pay phone?

I know that one of my providers told me that "You can extract the ANI-II from the ISUP-OLI in the From: field to determine which calls are payphone calls. The following ANI-2 codes are PayPhone classifications: 25, 27, 29, 70".

Does A2B have a way to apply a connect charge only if the call originated at a pay phone, or do I need to handle it a different way? If so, how?

Thanks.

Hi

You need to identify it as a payphone in Asterisk, then you can configure A2Billing to charge PAL in a variety of different ways.

Joe

Thank you for that Joe.

Does anyone know of a how to on this topic?

Hi

When I last worked with PAL, (payphone Access Levy) Our carrier MCI, changed the DID for us by appending a 0 to landline calls, 1 to cell-phones, and 2 for Payphones.

Can your carrier do the same?

Joe

Unfortunately, they kick it back to freepbx to strip out the digits from the invite. From my way of thinking, this should be handled by A2Billing. It appears to be a universal method of handling the issue, and it is directly related to the cost of calls. Although on the other hand, payphones seem to be a non-issue. At least I can't remember the last time I saw one and I think this is further limited to toll free numbers called from pay phones.

In your experience, is this an issue?

Hi

Some countries charge different amounts for NGN's depending on whether access is from cell or a landline.



Can you expand in this comment? I don't understand who "They " are.

I would disagree that the identification of the SIP packet headers, or for that matter, whatever information is sent in q931, H323, IAX, and all the other protocols supported by Asterisk. A2Billing does not really care about the protocol. This is why I say that it a payphone has to be identified in Asterisk, before calling A2Billing.

Joe

By "they" I mean my carrier.

Of course, you are quite correct. I can see that I must first capture the ANI2 info within Asterisk and then pass it to A2Billing. From there I can see it would be a simple matter to add charges.

When I referred to the possibility that A2Billing provide a solution to the issue of pay phone surcharges, I was suggesting that A2Billing might wish to consider extending the core functionality into this area. It would seem that all A2Billing carriers must deal with this issue, just as we must all deal with interconnecting Asterisk with A2Billing by extending the extensions.conf file.

Simply a thought to consider and by no means critical.

The more I get to know A2Billing, the more I appreciate the product and the steller support provided.