The Ore. PUC ruled that extended area service (EAS) wasn’t entitl...
The Ore. PUC ruled that extended area service (EAS) wasn’t entitled to support from the state universal service fund. The agency was ruling on a petition by rural Monroe Telephone (Case AR 467) seeking inclusion of EAS in the…
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definition of basic services comprising the universal service entitlement. The change would have given Monroe more support from the fund. Monroe argued that excluding extended local calling from universal service subsidies would discriminate against rural customers by making them pay higher rates than urban customers for comparable service. But the PUC said its previous reviews of the universal service entitlement had concluded that EAS was an interexchange service, not local, and the entitlement extended only to supporting access to interexchange service but not to subsidizing the actual service itself. The PUC also said it didn’t want to be making piecemeal revisions in the universal service entitlement but preferred to address the issue in a comprehensive review of all the services comprising the entitlement. The PUC staff had said it intended to seek such a review by 2005. Meanwhile, the PUC approved updated access charge rates proposed by the Ore. Exchange Carrier Assn., that would increase common line, switching and transport rate elements by an average of 35%.