ALERT Minor rate increase at Bulkvs for calls to T-Mobile

[kenn10]

Hello Bulk Solutions Valued Customer,

The purpose of this email is to provide formal notice of an upcoming rate adjustment affecting your Wholesale Voice Termination services.

Effective June 3, 2026, outbound calls terminating to T-Mobile numbers will increase to $0.0099 per minute. All other outbound termination rates will remain unchanged.

This adjustment is being implemented due to an industry-wide issue impacting call delivery and completion to the T-Mobile network, which several major carriers are currently experiencing. The updated pricing will allow us to secure more direct routing into the T-Mobile network, resulting in significantly improved reliability, call quality, and call completion rates.

If you would like access to these updated routes and pricing prior to June 3, 2026, please contact us at [email protected].

Thank you for your continued partnership and trust in Bulk Solutions. We remain committed to delivering the highest levels of quality, reliability, and performance across our telecommunications services.

Best regards,
Bulk Solutions Team

 

[chris_c_]

This makes you wonder....

Is the reason BulkVS is cheap, because it's unencrypted and they let your call audio pass thru so many man in the middle servers who can eavesdrop on your call audio conversations, so calls are subsidized by being open for middle man servers to listen in on, therefore if you want private direct routing, it's gonna cost you 1 cent per minute, cheap means you're the product!?

 

[kenn10]

If your voice transits the internet, anyone can be a man-in-the-middle. Even encryption codes can be and are de-cyphered by criminals. As soon as any call hits the PSTN after passing through a VOIP provider, who knows who is listening. I'm not paranoid enough to worry about that. The cellular network has even more holes in it that the VOIP networks.

BulkVS is an excellent VSP and, for one, I am happy with them. T-Mobile is constantly tacking on fees. They started with high fees for SMS delivery and are obviously continuing to look for new revenue sources.

If you haven't tried BulkVS, don't knock it.

 

[atsak]

This issue has basically affected most of the inexpensive transit carriers. Sinch/Intelequents tie up with T-Mobile has apparently tilted the traffic to them in order to get it delivered reliably. It's just another market manipulation from another oligopoly to improve their and their partners finances . . . pretty common these days.

 

[chris_c_]

It'd be really nice if VSP's, such as BulkVS for example, would state on their website: Unencrypted customer call audio is handed off to Sinch, Bandwidth, and Peerless, without customers having to run PCAP tests to find out. And, if the VSP has any explicit call audio sharing agreements, it should be disclosed, for example, "Customer consents to call audio to be shared by explicit agreement between (VSP name) and Google, Microsoft, US CIA and US NSA for AI training and national security purposes."

Also, if Microsoft Teams Phone System require encryption on all call audio and SIP call signalling, why shouldn't the same encryption be a requirement for all VSP's, as snooping on calls should require at minimum a FISA warrant, not checkboxes on a Terms Of Use and Privacy Policy.

 

[Samot]

It'd be really nice if VSP's, such as BulkVS for example, would state on their website: Unencrypted customer call audio is handed off to Sinch, Bandwidth, and Peerless, without customers having to run PCAP tests to find out. And, if the VSP has any explicit call audio sharing agreements, it should be disclosed, for example, "Customer consents to call audio to be shared by explicit agreement between (VSP name) and Google, Microsoft, US CIA and US NSA for AI training and national security purposes."

Why do they need to state that? What call audio sharing are you talking about? In many cases the VPS doesn't even handle the audio between you and their upstreams. So a VPS could use Bandwidth and the audio stream is between Bandwidth and you and the VPS never gets involved in the audio/media. As for the CIA and NSA, no VPS is sharing audio with them without a warrant because the legal issues aren't worth it nor is the bad press. And again, not all VPSes actually do anything with the audio (i.e. never in the path) so they couldn't even share audio.

Also, if Microsoft Teams Phone System require encryption on all call audio and SIP call signalling, why shouldn't the same encryption be a requirement for all VSP's, as snooping on calls should require at minimum a FISA warrant, not checkboxes on a Terms Of Use and Privacy Policy.

Because Teams to Teams is on the same systems and network therefore end-to-end can be done but once Teams has to accept or pass a call off to the PSTN, everything beyond the Teams network is unencrypted.

Having encryption between you and the VPS is as far as the encryption goes because of the PSTN. So that phone call you received over your TLS based registration the incoming signalling/audio is only encrypted between the VPS and you. Same with your outgoing audio/signalling for the same call, between you and the VPS it's encrypted beyond that it's not.

Plus there is that whole possibility that the call traffic is going through more than one provider to get to the destination. The whole increase with BulkVS is due to the fact Inteliquent is the VoIP aggregator and they are now by passing them. So before you wanted to call a T-Mobile number it went from BulkVS to Inteliquent to T-Mobile. Now BulkVS is paying for direct peering into T-Mobile so it is now BulkVS to T-Mobile. So again a call might not be VPS to destination carrier directly, it could pass through other transit carriers. Which is why STIR/SHAKEN has requires that no non-IP transit can been in the carrier paths.

Oh and this isn't anything new. Carriers have been passing calls through each other since the start of telecom. In New Mexico there are still at least 4 private ILECs that don't have massive peering agreements with multiple carriers. They have peering agreements with AT&T or Verizon....and for anyone to send a call to those ILECs has to send the call via a carrier they peer with. There has never been a point in telecom where everything was 100% Point A to Point Z, there's always been cases of Point A -- other transits inbetween -- Point Z.

 

[atsak]

It'd be really nice if VSP's, such as BulkVS for example, would state on their website: Unencrypted customer call audio is handed off to Sinch, Bandwidth, and Peerless, without customers having to run PCAP tests to find out. And, if the VSP has any explicit call audio sharing agreements, it should be disclosed, for example, "Customer consents to call audio to be shared by explicit agreement between (VSP name) and Google, Microsoft, US CIA and US NSA for AI training and national security purposes."

Also, if Microsoft Teams Phone System require encryption on all call audio and SIP call signalling, why shouldn't the same encryption be a requirement for all VSP's, as snooping on calls should require at minimum a FISA warrant, not checkboxes on a Terms Of Use and Privacy Policy.

This is something that's known by anyone who works with VOIP. RTP encryption is not default (SRTP has been around a long time but really wasn't well implemented until maybe 5 years ago or so), and SS7 switched network voice channels weren't encrypted where some (much?) traffic still traverses. If you need encryption on voice traffic use Signal or other end to end encrypted solution.

 

[chris_c_]

I haven't seen this mentioned here, but... in 2026 it's a myth that all phone call audio is exposed to the unencrypted SS7 PSTN.

If you're a US based mobile phone customer, when you call another US based mobile customer using VoLTE (Voice over LTE) or VoNR (Voice over 5G), your call audio stays entirely inside the IP network as an end-to-end IP/VoIP stream. You call signalling never hits the legacy SS7 (Signaling System 7) nor does your call audio downgrade to the low-fidelity audio for transit thru the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network). Because T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon all have direct IP peering agreements so that customer HD audio calls can stay HD quality by transiting in HD call audio form directly between the mobile network operators' IP networks, avoiding the PSTN and its downgrade to muffled G711.u low-fi audio.

When you dial, the signaling setup is handled by the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS).

Your mobile carrier uses IP-based protocols such as SIP to locate the other customer.

Because both mobile phones are on either the same mobile network or two mobile networks with direct IP peering, the media servers (which carry your voice audio) stay on the packet-switched IP data core.

Your audio will hit the PSTN only if the call leaves your mobile network operator's network (e.g., calling a landline), if the other user is roaming on a carrier without direct IP interoperability, or if one of you falls back to older circuit-switched tech (like 2G).

The exception is the signaling data used to route the call, which still interacts with SS7/Diameter networks to verify user availability, manage billing, and enforce network policy. However, the HD voice payload itself remains purely data on the IP network.

EDITED after receiving feedback, thanks.

 

[Samot]

You call audio never hits the legacy SS7 (Signaling System 7) PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) for audio transport.

Sigh. The PSTN describes the interconnections **between carriers** that's why it is the Public Switched Telephone Network. Back in the the day it was literally copper wires from each carrier being wired together at the same CO/exchange switch location so they could interconnect. It's how they switch calls between their networks regardless of the transport type be it TDM/ISDN, Mobile, VoIP/IP, etc.

Also, SS7 never handles the audio for the call. That's done over TDM, ISDN D-channels or SIP. SS7 just handles the signalling.

 

[atsak]

Sigh. The PSTN describes the interconnections **between carriers** that's why it is the Public Switched Telephone Network. Back in the the day it was literally copper wires from each carrier being wired together at the same CO/exchange switch location so they could interconnect. It's how they switch calls between their networks regardless of the transport type be it TDM/ISDN, Mobile, VoIP/IP, etc.

Also, SS7 never handles the audio for the call. That's done over TDM, ISDN D-channels or SIP. SS7 just handles the signalling.

yes this is an important distinction - ISDN and TDM weren't encrypted either (they theoretically could be now as they can be treated as data channels at 128kbps or so but I haven't really kept up on whether they are). I did actually mean the SS7 signaled calls (in fact the SS7 messaging wasn't encrypted either AFAIK, nor the voice channels).

 

[billsimon]

in 2026 it's a myth that all phone call audio is exposed to the unencrypted SS7 PSTN

Any call that goes through an IP/TDM gateway must be unencrypted.

But also, even today, I would be shocked to find any fully IP handoff between carriers that is encrypted.

 

[dallas]

SS7 just handles the signalling.

Hence the name "Signaling System No7"