International Calls
Flowroute fully supports international calls, both inbound and outbound. However, due to the higher rates in some destinations, the most common fraudulent calls occurs over international destinations. Because of this, we are forced to place some basic security measures to protect you.
While in many cases, making an international call is flawless, there may be some cases where you are unable to place such calls.
If you are unable to make international calls, the first thing to check is to make sure domestic calls are successful.
If domestic calls are failing as well, you may be experiencing general outbound call issues which should be handled differently.
If you are able to make domestic calls and only international outbound calls are having an issue, please see below for a few common causes and suggested troubleshooting steps.
What might prevent outbound calls to international destinations?
Destination number format
Each country has different digits and formats for telephone numbers, which may be confusing for a dialing party. Some countries have a 10-digit format, while some countries have an 8-digit format. Some countries have area codes in 3-digits and some have them as 2-digits. In many cases, there is miscommunication in telephone numbers, and all you need to do is confirm the number to make sure you have the correct telephone number for the destination.
Some countries have the leading 0 in area code, which must be omitted.
This format may actually come incorrectly from your phone system. Most phone systems have the feature to prepend digits in an effort to help end-users make calls with less dialing. However, in configuring this option, a system administrator may have configured a special rule to place international calls (i.e. press 9). Confirm that there are no special requirements for making outbound calls.
Maximum Outbound Rate
In order to prevent fraudulent calls to international destinations from draining your account balance, Flowroute has a Maximum Outbound Rate security feature. This option can be found under Preferences -> Fraud Control. The default value upon signup is $0.01, which means calls to any destination with a per-minute cost above $0.01 will be blocked. This rule includes domestic calls by default, but most domestic destinations are lower than $0.01, which passively bypasses the rule. If international calls are failing, check this rule first to make sure that calls to your destination are allowed. You can find outbound rates here; please keep in mind those are standard rates. To download your current outbound rates in respect of any discounts you may have please log in to your Flowroute account at the Manage portal and go to Billing → Outbound rates.
You may wish to keep the outbound rate low in order to prevent fraud, and only require calls to a few destinations on a regular basis that exceeds the rule. In such a case, you can use the Destination Whitelist option, which bypasses the maximum outbound rate for selected destinations. By using this option, you can have your Maximum Outbound Rate rule at the minimum rate for domestic calls, and still make outbound calls to international destinations, which you wish to call regularly.
Strict Whitelist
Many customers use the Strict Whitelist option to fully prevent fraudulent calls to unwanted destinations. This option can also be found under Preferences -> Fraud Control. This option fully disables the Maximum Outbound Rate rule, as well as all outbound calls to any destination, including the U.S, unless selected in Destination Whitelist. If international calls are failing, check if this rule is enabled, and that your destination country is selected in the whitelist.
Destination Restriction
Destination Restriction is not a built-in feature in your Manage portal. However, when Flowroute sees an unusual spike of calls to a certain country, such a destination is automatically blocked due to a possible fraud alert and gets added to the Destination Restriction list, under Blocked Outbound Destinations. If you are unable to make outbound calls to certain international destinations, check this list under Preferences -> Fraud Control. If the country is added to this list, make sure to check the Date Blocked to evaluate the traffic. If the traffic is found to be legitimate, you can Unblock the destination, which will allow you to make calls to these destinations again.
IMPORTANT! ONLY MAKE THE MINIMUM REQUIRED CHANGES. CHANGES TO THESE OPTIONS MAY INCREASE THE VULNERABILITY OF YOUR ACCOUNT.