Overview

Unfortunately, as our network has grown, so too has our exposure to fraud and spam. We take enormous pride in our network's quality and reliability. We've found Surcharges are a necessary evil to protect our network's integrity and to keep scammers and spammers off the Skyetel Network. These Surcharges only impact a small number of our customers; most of our customers will never be charged a Surcharge

All of our Rates & Fees are published inside the portal here: https://login.skyetel.com/#billing/rates

Who is at risk for Surcharges?

Surcharges are not applied to all accounts - they may be enabled if your account has significant amounts of traffic volume, if your traffic patterns are over our thresholds, if you frequently fall victim of fraud, or if you have negotiated pricing. Additionally, we will do everything we can to work with you to correct any traffic pattern issues prior to applying surcharges. These surcharges are our "last resort" and are only intended to protect our network from abusive users. A good thing to remember - the purpose of the surcharges isn't to make money, its to protect our network.

While we do reserve the right to apply Surcharges to any/all of our accounts, as long as you are willing to work with us if your traffic is out of compliance, you won't have to worry about these charges . charges or violating our terms of service 

What Surcharges do you charge?

In addition to our regular rates, Skyetel charges the following Surcharges:

• Short Call Percentage
• Indeterminate Caller ID
• 0 Second Duration Calls
  
  

What is a Short Call Duration Surcharge?

A "Short Call" is a call that is less than 6 seconds long. Generally speaking, these short calls are caused by people who call your phone number, get your voicemail and then hang up. They are also caused by people hanging up immediately on a caller once they realize its a robocall. Spammers and Scammers have a much higher Short Call Percentage because they call many people at once, never leave a voicemail, or get hung up on very quickly. 

On average, a regular customer will have a "Short Call Percentage" of about 7-8%. This means, for 100 calls they place, 7 or 8 of them will result in them having a call under 6 seconds. Its very rare that normal users ever break 10%. A scammer or spammer will be much much higher - close to 60-70%. 

Based on these averages, we assess the following Short Call Duration Surcharges:

Conversational Traffic - Short Call Duration limit of 20%
(Conversational Traffic is the broad term for normal users who are using our network for regular phone calls)

Autodialer Traffic - Short Call Duration limit of 40% 
(Autodialer Traffic is the broad term for companies who dial people using computers - this is what banks, school districts and government agencies do)

What is a Indeterminate Caller ID Surcharge?

Indeterminate Caller ID is when our customers place outbound calls through our network with Caller IDs that are not accurate and impossible to determine. For example, if a user places an outbound call through our network with the Caller ID of (000) 000-0000, that would be an "Indeterminate Caller ID" since it is not a phone number. Another example would be if the Caller ID is "350" or if it is empty. Spammers and scammers will intentionally break their Caller ID so they cannot be called back or identified by you or the authorities.

For our regular customers who simply have a typo in their Caller ID, we try our hardest to fix Caller IDs when we can. For example, if a customer sends us 360-986-5200, we will rewrite it to be +13609865200 for them automatically and do not charge them a surcharge. So, just like Short Call Duration, this only impacts a very small number of our customers.

What is a 0 second call?

0 second calls are calls that have a 0 duration. This is usually caused when a customer dials a phone number but before the recipient answers or it goes to voicemail, they hang up and "Cancel" the call. Most of our customers have an average 0 Second Call average of 4%. However, scammers and spammers will have very very high 0 Second Averages (60-80%) because they will call 10-15 people at the same time for every 1 agent. Since they initiate 15 calls when they can only possible talk to one at a time, they cancel a huge number of calls (which result in 0 duration calls). 

Conversational Traffic - 0 Second Call limit of 25% 

Autodialer Traffic - 0 Second Call limit of 40% 

When are surcharges applied? 

Surcharges are applied on or before the 3rd day of the month for the preceding month's traffic. For example, for traffic that was completed during the month of October, any applicable surcharges will be assessed in November. 

How can I keep track of my traffic patterns?

Easy! We allow you to look at your traffic patterns from our portal: https://login.skyetel.com/#endpoints/overview. From this view, you can get a granular look at which phone server is in violation so that you can correct it with your end users.