COMMENT: For those that don't want to read the full story below, here' a quick summary, seasoned with perhaps a hint of sarcasm:
Dear FCC:
[Whine] Please preserve our monopolies and let us continue to gouge our customers, since there is almost no competition and we really love being able to extract every last penny we can from them. [Whine] Please don't look at our filings with the SEC, or our financial statements, or you might get the wrong idea and think we're doing a whole lot better than we're telling you. [Whine] Please continue to give us all those subsidies we've grown so accustomed to, after all we are corporations and the law says corporations are like people in the eyes of the law, and if people can get welfare from the government then we should get it too. [Whine] And please kill the evil VoIP companies, who are stealing our slaves, er, customers, after all we have a God-given right to squeeze them because their families have lived in our turf for ages and they are too stupid to move out of our area.Signed, The rural (not necessarily small) telephone companies of the United States
P.S. And please, while you are at it, we want MORE. [Whine]
End of admittedly snarky comment (hey, it's Friday), now here's the real story.
The House Rural Caucus and several trade organizations are making a last ditch effort to get the Federal Communications Commission to deny a Level 3 Communications request to exempt certain VoIP calls from access charges. Under commission rules, Level 3's forbearance petition not to apply access charges would require FCC action by this Tuesday, March 22, otherwise by default the petition is considered granted.
Since the matter is being cut this close, the House group recently sent a letter to outgoing FCC chairman Michael Powell urging the Level
3 petition be denied, not only because of concerns for rural telco revenues from access charges, but also the Rural Caucus maintained that segments of VoIP, the broader proceeding on intercarrier compensation (ICC) and many other related issues should be treated comprehensively as a whole and not a in a piecemeal fashion.. A central Level 3 question is whether VoIP calls should be subject to reciprocal compensation or access charges.The Rural Caucus move drew support from the Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance (ITTA), the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association (NTCA), the Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies (OPASTCO), and the Western Telecommunications Alliance (WTA). They lauded the Rural Caucus for recognizing that a granting of Level 3's petition? 'would prejudge' many of the issues.
Full story at: