by J. Tyson Covey and Brian A. McAleenan
Briefing is now complete at the D.C. Circuit in the latest appeal involving the FCC's rules on access stimulation schemes. Access stimulation (or traffic pumping) refers to a practice in which a local telephone company partners with entities that generate large amounts of terminating long-distance traffic, such as "free" conference calling providers and chat lines. This allows the local telephone company to generate large revenues from the access charges that long-distance carriers must pay to terminate the calls through the local telephone company. The revenues are then shared with the conferencing or chat line entities, which allows the services to be "free" to the end users.
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