Immediate reductions in intrastate originating access rates for pu...
Immediate reductions in intrastate originating access rates for public switched telephone network-VoIP traffic would have a negative financial impact not only on mid-sized incumbent LECs, but also on competitive LECs such as Cbeyond, EarthLink, Integra Telecom and tw telecom, an…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
attorney for the CLECs wrote the FCC (http://xrl.us/bmwpuz). That responded to a Frontier letter arguing a “flash cut” of intrastate originating access rates for such calls would financially harm the company. If such rates were cut, the CLECs said, they would experience “estimated losses in their gross annual originating access revenues” that would make it “more difficult for the Joint CLECs to adjust to the reductions in their terminating access revenues mandated by the ICC/USF Reform Order.” Time Warner Cable also weighed in on the dispute (http://xrl.us/bmwqga). When TWC decided to implement its current business model -- where its retail VoIP affiliate would purchase wholesale telecom services from an affiliated CLEC -- the company did so with the expectation that it would collect the higher intrastate origination fees for VoIP calls, it said. But “in the interest of advancing the Commission’s overall reform efforts, TWC and other cable operators were willing to support a compromise approach whereby they would be limited to charging reduced interstate rates for those calls,” the cable company said. “Thus, to the extent the ILECs’ proposal is premised on the notion that they alone will experience a revenue loss as a result of the Commission’s reforms, they are incorrect.” The ILECs’ proposal is “plainly unjustified” and will help give Frontier and Windstream a “competitive advantage,” Time Warner Cable said. Frontier and Windstream requested in December that the commission clarify its rules on origination fees for toll intrastate PSTN-VoIP traffic (CD Fe. 14 p13).