Back at the time of the Bell breakup, the access charge was a
> temporary band-aid the FCC added to make up for part of the previous
> subsidy from deliberately overpriced interstate long distance rates.
> It should have gone away in a few years once the telcos went to the
> states to adjust their rates to include it, but that never happened.
It was intrastate long distance that was overpriced. State commissions required this intentionally to make POTS less expensive to their local constituencies.
The FCC, which dealt only with interstate L.D., called for low interstate rates, since the FCC were not involved in the rates for POTS.
If you lived in a large state, it was particularly noticeable. It cost a lot more to call from Dallas to El Paso (or v.v.) than it did to call from Dallas to Phoenix.
Wes Leatherock snipped-for-privacy@aol.com snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com