Plusnet: Overcharge following abnormal termination?

I've got an Asterisk PBX (1.4.12) if that's of any relevance.

Plusnet resell Gradwell's service. A SIP call made via them early this week terminated abnormally when my Internet connection went down. The actual length of that call was just over 30 minutes. I rebooted the router and then typed "core show channels", which showed no active channels on the Asterisk box. However, I rebooted it just to be sure then checked that SIP peers and registers were connected. I phoned the same party 42 minutes after the start of the original call to continue where we left off. So my original call could not have been for more than 42 minutes less however long it took to reboot the router and Asterisk box.

When I checked my account, I noticed that Plusnet had timed the call as over 1hr 40min - i.e. they'd continued timing the call for approximately an hour after it had terminated.

Is this expected with abnormal call termination? (i.e. that they can't detect and so close a "dead" call for approximately an hour?)

TIA,

Geoff

Hi

This can and does happen if, as you say the connection is lost.

Have you spoken to Plusnet(Gradwell) support ?.
Basicly the only way they have to know the call has ended is either a bye message from your server or a no RTP stream, and this is timed.

Ian

Hi Ian, and thanks for the reply.

I have a case open with Plusnet support, who've passed the issue to Gradwell. I posted here for a reality check since I suspect that Gradwell will check the appropriate CDRs and then say that their records show the call length was as billed. However, I'd love my suspicions to be proved wrong - and I'll certainly report back if that happens.

The RTP stream should have ceased as soon as my Internet connection went down. I accept that it would need to be in a "no traffic" condition for a couple of minutes (ten minutes tops) before they could assume the call to be dead with reasonable surety. So I could understand if they can't detect a dead call for a couple of minutes or so after abnormal termination - but for slightly over an hour?

Thanks again,

Geoff

Quote:

I accept that it would need to be in a "no traffic" condition for a couple of minutes (ten minutes tops) before they could assume the call to be dead with reasonable surety.

No not realy, the stream looked at is the stream from you to the gateway. Some gateways set this as a short interval but this does cause cutoffs when for example calls are held and no MOH is playing or listening to a conference call muted.

Ian

Quote:

I accept that it would need to be in a "no traffic" condition for a couple of minutes (ten minutes tops) before they could assume the call to be dead with reasonable surety.

No not realy, the stream looked at is the stream from you to the gateway. Some gateways set this as a short interval but this does cause cutoffs when for example calls are held and no MOH is playing or listening to a conference call muted.

Ian

Plusnet have finally got an answer out of Gradwell, so I'm posting a précis in case anyone's interested.

It seems that the only reason Gradwell stopped timing the call was that the other end dropped the call an hour and ten minutes or so after the connection was lost. Even with the overcharge, I didn't use all my bundled minutes for February and there's no carry-over. Pragmatically it thus made no difference whether or not they re-credited my account. However, they conceded that the call hadn't been for as long as their records showed because I'd placed a second call to the same number that would have been concurrent with the first, and Plusnet confirmed that my DSL connection had gone down.

Further research shows that the called number is allocated to another SIP VSP and I suspect that the call being SIP at both ends made it more difficult to detect when the call terminated.

Methinks I'll have to investigate ENUM and DUNDi to see whether I can place similar calls direct.

Geoff

Hi

Quote:

Methinks I'll have to investigate ENUM and DUNDi to see whether I can place similar calls direct.

Yes..

Ian