[zeroxfe]

> I wasn't saying you don't know because you're ignorant about the telecoms industry. I think you don't know how to algorithmically resolve a conflict between two adversaries who assert significantly different versions of history, because nobody knows how to do that.

Yes, this is why they negotiate this stuff before the fact. Switches see different things all the time, especially when there are bugs, outages, or misconfigurations.

The lawyers come in when there is actual conflict, e.g., when fraud is suspected, or anything outside the terms of what was already negotiated.

The value of a blockchain here is that these rules (the prenegotiated ones) can be executed by verifiable smart contracts, instead of trusting a third party like Amdocs. If there is a real conflict, there will still be lawyers involved, but with the added advantage of an immutable public (to the federation) log. The bonus (which is yet to be proven) is that costs will be driven down significantly without the middleman.