Tell HN: My Telco Turned Off International Calling

I just received the following from my telco:

``` Dear Member,

At Telco, the security of our members and our network is extremely important to us. In order to protect our members from potential fraudulent activity, we closely monitor international calling patterns and traffic in our network. If you utilize a different long-distance provider other than Telco, we are unable to monitor such traffic and mitigate potential fraud on your account.

With the majority of fraudulent incidents originating from foreign countries, Telco is taking cautionary steps and immediately disabling all international calling, regardless of your long-distance provider.

We understand that this may cause some inconvenience, but please be assured that it is a precautionary measure taken to safeguard the interest of our members.

If you regularly make international calls or would like international calling enabled on your account, please call us at 541-xxx-xxxx or 541-xxx-xxxx. If you don't have a need to call internationally, no action is required.

We appreciate your continued support and loyalty as a member of the cooperative. Should you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us anytime. ```

I was surprised at this unilateral action, without any warning or other option to opt-out prior to this change taking effect. Has anyone else seen this kind of move by their telco? Is this the new normal?

1 comment

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toast0 3y ago ↗

My voip provider disables international calling by default, and if you want to enable it, you've got to jump through some hoops. International calling can get very expensive, very quickly. A huge portion of the US population is highly unlikely to make any international calls, so disable for everyone, and opt-in for people who actually use it, is not a bad stance to take.

Many fraudsters are able to get a revenue share of inbound international calls, and then encourage victims to call them through a variety of means. It's a lot easier for Telco to disable those calls in advance than to clawback the toll charges they'd need to pay the international telco.