PABX bug may cost companies thousands
A PABX bug has cost some business thousands of Rands in phone bills. The bug – identified by telecoms consultant Duncan Hiles – is said to ‘cause’ calls of excessive durations.
According to Hiles he came across instances where clients received accounts that were substantially higher than usual. On analyzing their itemized billing he discovered calls of excessive durations – sometimes running into hundreds of hours.
Hiles explains what he has seen:
- Both the sending and receiving parties seem to be equipped with PRI (ISDN Primary Rate) lines
- The receiving party has an auto attendant
- The long calls are always in pairs – i.e. two of the 30 PRI channels are each making a long call to the same number. The start time of the two calls differs by a small amount, which is possibly when the caller puts the phone down, but the end time is the same for both channels.
- Where I have been able to analyse the PABX records, there are no corresponding long calls in the records.
- What I have found is that sometimes it is possible to identify the call that started the problem, but it shows as a normal call to the number; the extension is used again to make or receive other calls (in other words, it is not a trivial case of a user not replacing the receiver incorrectly); but the PABX port that routed the call, plus one other port, do not show other activity until after the long calls have ended.
“In my experience the PABX's at each end have been what Telkom calls ‘private’ equipment. I did however have a conversation with a Telkom technician who told me of a recent case where this problem had happened where there was a Telkom-supplied PABX at one end, the client was paid out by Telkom,” said Hiles.
“When the clients have approached Telkom to request some relief, since they patently had not been on the phone to that party for 44 hours, or 36 days, or eight weeks (these are all actual cases), the response has been that Telkom is charging for calls that were connected for that time; the fact that the originating and called people or equipment did not end the call is not their problem,” Hiles said.
Hiles further said that he tried unsuccessfully to engage with Telkom on behalf of his affected clients. “The response from the PABX suppliers is similar: ‘it is impossible for their equipment to remain connected for this long’.”
Hiles supplied MyBroadband with a spreadsheet of actual calls running into tens and even hundreds of hours which cost his clients up to R 7 600-00 per call.
“One series of incidents that were a bit different was where a client had a fax server, working through a PABX and going out through an ISDN BRA (Basic Rate A) line. There were four calls over a period of a couple of weeks, all to Fax2Email numbers, that lasted over 60 hours each,” said Hiles.
“At Fax2Email rates (R1.79 per minute or part thereof) this came to more than R7 000 per call, or almost R30 000 above the normal monthly cost. Again, the fax server log showed ‘normal’ durations, and there was nothing on the PABX records to show unusual activity.”
Hiles said that he and his clients are desperately looking for a person or organization who can assist in understanding the circumstances that can cause these events so that users can take steps to protect themselves against these ‘nasty surprises’.
Telkom was asked for feedback but could not provide information about this issue.
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