Last week, it was reported by the Oregon Department of Justice that United Telecom, Inc. can no longer do business in Oregon after allegations of “slamming.” The press release was briefly passed around by people of Junction Networks who handle the Local Number Porting (LNP) process to underscore just how important the paperwork involved in porting numbers is. Somewhat new to the telecommunications industry, I have been curious about this term, slamming. The term is peculiar, nondescript in this particular meaning, has several negative connotations, and yet-it's actually made its way into government documentation! I decided to look into it further...
What is slamming?
According to the FCC, “ ‘Slamming’ is the illegal practice of switching a consumer's traditional wireline telephone company for local, local toll, or long distance service without permission. The slamming rules also prohibit unreasonable delays in the execution of an authorized switch by your local telephone company. The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) slamming liability rules provide a remedy if you've been slammed, discourage slamming by removing the profit, and protect consumers from illegal switches. The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau can also take action against slammers.” In this recent case, United Telecom is a long distance telephone service (landline) reseller based in California. According to the Oregon Department of Justice, The company “offers landline telephone services to many small businesses throughout Oregon... The complaints filed with the [Public Utility Commission] reported frequent misrepresentations on behalf of United Telecom regarding its affiliation with service providers such as Qwest.” As described by a local Oregon news station, “These practices include calling up and pretending to represent the customers current long distance phone provider offering new services to lower your bill but in reality switching the customers long distance provider.” Slamming!
Where did the term slamming come from?
According to this American University Law journal, the term slamming was born soon after the U.S. government put an end to the AT&T monopoly over the telecommunications industry in 1984. Up until then, AT&T had influence in 22 Bell Operating Companies (BOC’s), which AT&T was forced to give up in the name of a healthy, pro-competition telecommunications market.
“The BOCs were spun off into seven separate regional holding companies that would then have responsibility for providing local service in their areas,” describes the journal. “...The FCC implemented these equal access provisions through a process of pre-subscription, which allowed each telephone customer to choose their primary interexchange carrier from among a number of competing long-distance carriers... Although the increased competition in long-distance telephone service has been largely positive, it also has spawned a practice known as 'slamming'..."
Yes, but why is the practice known as slamming, you are still wondering. The term slamming was coined within AT&T in 1987, but the exact backstory is relatively unknown. A Wikipedia writer stated the following: “the term slamming was coined by Mick Ahearn who was a consumer marketing manager at AT&T in September 1987. The inspiration for the term came from the ease at which a competitor could switch a customer's service away from AT&T by falsely notifying a telephone company that an AT&T customer had elected to switch to their service. This process gave AT&T's competitors a "slam dunk" method for the unauthorized switching of a customer's long distance service. The term slamming became an industry standard term for this practice.” I read in another source, however, that Ahearn developed the term out of a modification to the term, sliming, made popular in the movie Ghostbusters.
Current state of slamming
There have been several government initiatives in the telecommunications industry since the original AT&T and Bell System break up, the largest being The Telecommunications Act of 1996, which expanded the market for combined telecommunications services. But some things, such as documentation necessary in the Local Number Portablity (LNP) process, still remain. And while we hear moans and groans when customers are asked to send a signed letter of agency (LOA), for example, we are reminded of why this cumbersome process is in place: to protect customers from bad practices in the telecommunications industry. To learn more about slamming, visit the FCC website.