Could it be that more people in South Dakota pay for pornography than any other demographic? What could possibly explain this behavior? Oddly, the rural phone service providers in the Mount Rushmore State seem to have some explaining to do. If you have a phone and live in South Dakota you are paying for others to have access to “free” phone sex.
While providing telephone service to small rural communities, which admittedly are often difficult to serve, rural phone carriers have found a way to use their legitimate business as a vehicle to leverage a more seedy income stream, by gaming the system originally designed to make sure that quality telephone service could be delivered, and was affordable, even in the most rural of areas. Sadly, the game these service providers now play is about artificially increasing telephone traffic on their networks to increase their revenues at expense of long distance or mobile phone customers.
Perhaps tellingly, the scheme is called “traffic pumping” or “access stimulation.”
The rural telephone company strikes a deal, which is often not exactly made public, with a company that markets “free” calling services such as conference calls, adult chat lines or phone sex services. The marketing operations direct all of the “free” phone calls to the rural telephone network, thereby driving up the traffic on the network, even if the call is ultimately answered elsewhere. With more traffic comes more guaranteed revenue for the rural carrier because federal law requires subsidies to be paid by the phone company that delivers the phone call to the rural carrier. So, because of the increased traffic, those carriers can charge high fees to wireless and long distance carriers to connect all of these “free” calls.
The rural carrier then pays a kickback to the call marketing company for having it direct all of its “free” calls to carrier’s network. The carrier then skims the remaining money off and takes it as profit from this seamy bootstrapping operation.
Legal, but hardly moral.
And, again, where is the money coming ultimately coming from? Taxpayers.
How much from taxpayers to fatten the wallet of these rural phone providers and the phone sex operators? $190,000,000 estimated.
And what do you get? A cold shower of higher phone rates.