Industry Split on FCC Plan to Move Toll-Free-Number Originating Access Fees to Bill-and-Keep
Parties diverged on how to curb abuse of toll-free-number originating access charges, which the FCC proposed to phase out over three years. Large telcos, cable interests and others backed transitioning all "8YY" call hand-offs to a bill-and-keep regime, under which carriers exchanging traffic recover costs from users not each other. Rural carrier groups, one cable company and others opposed such a move and sought different solutions. Comments were posted Tuesday and Wednesday in docket 18-156 on a June 8 Further NPRM. Chairman Ajit Pai says the intercarrier compensation (ICC) system is being gamed, including by robocallers generating toll-free traffic to spark payments.
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Complete the ICC shift to bill-and-keep for all telecom traffic, Verizon recommended: "Because originating access charges have not transitioned to bill-and-keep ... arbitrageurs and fraudsters have moved their consumer-harming schemes to 8YY calls. These schemes and the disputes they engender are growing. Quickly moving originating access charges to bill-and-keep and reducing per-call 8YY database query charges would eliminate financial incentives fueling the schemes." AT&T agreed and also urged adoption of its "direct interconnection" proposal to address "CLECs acting as third-party tandem providers" accounting for "many" abuses.
Comcast backed "gradually transitioning inter- and intrastate 8YY traffic to bill-and-keep and reducing database dip charges to a unified rate over a reasonable transition." It said the originating charges should be phased out "whenever the originating service provider controls the call path" to interexchange carriers (IXCs), and a uniform dip charge should be set over three years. NCTA backed a transition to bill-and-keep for all originating traffic, "similar" to a six-year transition for terminating access charges in a 2011 order. But Charter Communications opposed bill-and-keep for originating 8YY calls.
CenturyLink said "significant ICC reform" is needed, mixed with "some caution" because while various "8YY arbitrage problems" are prevalent, "8YY aggregation" is "more nuanced." It backed bill-and-keep for end-office originating access charges; "more limited steps to address tandem charges"; the FCC proposal to limit database query charges, with a transition; and steps to ensure carriers can recover lost access revenue. GCI Communication endorsed a three-year move to 8YY originating bill-and-keep, "with appropriate consideration for Alaska's unique network architecture." The Ad Hoc Telecommunications Users Committee urged implementing bill-and-keep for originating traffic "immediately" or in time for 2019 access charge filings rather than over a three-year period. It opposed an access revenue recovery mechanism.
Windstream, Frontier Communications and NTCA objected to the FCC proposal, and called bill-and-keep for all 8YY traffic an "overbroad and inappropriate" action. "Focus on the small number of bad actors," they urged. "The FCC should take a long, hard look ... before it imposes an extreme remedy to an almost nonexistent problem -- and hurts consumers in the process," blogged Windstream CEO Tony Thomas, who suggested consumers would be charged for toll-free calls. WTA also supported targeted action to "punish and deter fraud and arbitrage abuses," and "vigorously" objected "to the proposed punishment of more than a thousand innocent RLECs and rural CLECs" through bill-and-keep. ITTA opposed bill-and-keep and asked the FCC to "narrowly tailor reforms" to target 8YY access stimulators. Rural Nebraska carriers cited numerous obstacles to a bill-and-keep solution, which if it did occur, required a "dynamic" mechanism to recover revenue.
Constant "self-help" by large IXCs shows "their lack of credibility and contempt" for FCC rules, said Teliax and Peerless Network. They urged the agency to require IXCs to file a rate complaint at the FCC or in court if they withhold access charge payments, and to "presume large IXCs will pocket any savings from moving 8YY access to B&K," among other actions. West Telecom Services said "the abuses seem only a pretext" for adopting, apparently at the urging of large IXCs, the shift to bill-and-keep. It called for a targeted crackdown that prohibits "illicit 8YY calling practices" and enlists industry help to identify and stop "bad actors."
Somos, the toll-free numbering administrator, took no position on bill-and-keep. It recognized high 8YY originating fees attract "traffic pumping," but said it would be "unacceptable if Toll-Free calls are the only calls that customers are charged for on their bills."