USTelecom urged the FCC to ‘act quickly to protect the integrity ...
USTelecom urged the FCC to “act quickly to protect the integrity of the access charge system” by clamping down on companies engaged in “traffic pumping.” Some rural ILECs are misusing FCC Rule 61.39 to quit the NECA pool so…
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they can raise access charges to an unreasonable level, USTelecom Pres. Walter McCormick said in a letter sent Wed. The rule was meant to “provide an administratively easy process for the smallest rural [LECs] to leave the NECA pool by establishing rates based on historical traffic levels rather than expensive and time-consuming cost studies,” McCormick said. It wasn’t intended to be “a vehicle for such carriers to earn unlimited windfalls totally divorced from their actual costs,” McCormick said. “The rule was expressly premised on a finding that historical traffic data likely would result in reasonable rates,” he said: “USTelecom is intimately familiar with the history and intent of Rule 61.39 because this association worked closely with the Commission in developing the rule, in order to provide our small-carrier members with flexibility to leave the NECA pool to establish their own cost-based rates without the extensive costs associated with traditional tariff filings.” When adopted, the rule gave the FCC “full authority to take ‘corrective action’ to addresses abuses of the rule,” USTelecom said. Three Ia. LECs recently offered the FCC a compromise way of using Rule 61.38 that wouldn’t produce such high access charges (CD June 6 p11).