USTA Pres. Walter McCormick and 146 of the association’s small co...

charges. The AT&T petition asking the Commission to determine whether access charges apply to long distance voice calls transported over the Internet protocol backbone network has been pending more than 15 months. In an ex parte letter late last week, the companies warned the FCC that if it delayed action further, “the consequences may be catastrophic for rural LECs.” They complained the Commission’s inaction put them at risk because “access charges account for more than $2 billion in small company” interstate and intrastate revenue. They said an access charge exemption of long distance companies’ phone-to-phone IP services could “threaten the financial viability of small rural [LECs] and could affect consumers and impair customer service efforts by forcing rural LECs to delay network upgrades.” They also expressed concern an access charge exemption could release long distance companies from contributing to the Universal Service Fund, which they said “would greatly threaten the viability of the fund and the provision of universal telephone service to rural consumers.” The companies urged the Commission to act promptly and reject the AT&T petition. However, AT&T argued that issues related to universal service and access charge contribution were better addressed holistically in an intercarrier compensation reform proceeding that “eliminates the access charge regime entirely rather than begin the process of importing the competition-distorting access charge regime into this new technology.” In an ex parte meeting with FCC Comr. Adelstein and a follow-up ex parte filing late last week, AT&T also argued IP-based service providers were in fact compensating all LECs for terminating traffic and “all LECs were recovering their respective costs plus a reasonable profit for terminating that traffic.” AT&T said any claim that a carrier wasn’t recovering its costs was “an outright fabrication.”