OPASTCO urged FCC to deny AT&T’s request that its phone- to-phone...

to transport a voice call reduces a LEC’s cost of terminating that call in any way.” Such calls “should be subject to both originating and terminating interstate access charges in order to provide local exchange carriers with lawful and adequate compensation for the use of their facilities,” OPASTCO said: “The functions performed by both the terminating LEC and the originating LEC for phone- to-phone IP calls are no different than the access functions they perform for regular long distance calls transported without IP technology.” Other groups with rural interests expressed similar sentiments. Telecom Consulting Assoc., which performs financial, regulatory and marketing services for more than 50 rural LECs, said “AT&T has failed to prove that its provisioning of long distance services using IP telephony is substantially different from other forms of service, from a transmission perspective, and thus should be afforded the substantially different treatment requested by AT&T.” National Telecom Cooperative Assn. said AT&T’s petition “is a preemptive attempt to evade paying legitimate access charges and avoid making lawful universal service fund contributions… AT&T couches its petition as a request for exemption from existing access charges but, if adopted, it would have an increasingly severe effect on universal service and separations.”