MYERSTON@KL.SRI.COM (HECTOR MYERSTON) (03/23/88)
About where to get the V&H Tables (and updates) some suggestions:
o Buy them from Bellcore 290W Mt Pleasant Ave
Livingston, NJ 07039 (800) 521-2673
o Buy them from a 3rd Party Supplier such as CCMI/McGraw-Hill
Info Sys Co (800) 825-3311
o Get them free from your LD Carrier. Ask for a tape of
NPA-NXXs they serve. It will contain much info you don't
need but, somewhere in there, the V&H coordinates will appear
Questions:
o Are you sure you are not re-inventing the wheel?. There are
about 500 Call Accounting packages in the market which do
this for you. (Priced from $450 to $20K)
o Why?. Exact pricing of dialed calls has the following flaws:
+ Errors in timing. Your system may or may not get answer
supervision from the distant end, your CPU may (will) make
subtle rounding errors in generating SMDR records.
+ Computional variations. AT&T uses a multi-step algorithm
in pricing calls. Other carriers use the simpler square root
of the sum of the squares (of the differences) divided by 10
+ Automatic Routing. Since your switch is going to select the
path a call takes and each path may have a different pricing
scheme, pricing each call could be difficult and meaningless
(for example, if you bill back, will the user pay more or less
depending on which route his call took?
Suggestion:
o Consider some type of "blended" pricing algorithm. The trend
is generally towards usage (time) sensitive pricing rather
than distance (V&H).
Sorry if this is $2 answer to a nickel question.
+HECTOR+
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