The National Telecom Co-op Assn. (NTCA) said a member survey show...
The National Telecom Co-op Assn. (NTCA) said a member survey showed moving to bill-&-keep (B&K) would harm rural carriers to the tune of more than $2 billion annually. NTCA said the survey of 370 rural companies, with a response…
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of about 60%, indicated that replacing access charges with what’s known as Central Office B&K or COBAK would eliminate more than $2 billion in annual access charges for rural LECs serving areas with fewer than 100,000 access lines. This is an average of $22 per line per month and the smaller the company the bigger the impact, the association said. NTCA said COBAK’s financial impact could cause “large increases in end user charges; dramatic increases in universal service support, further straining the universal service fund; the creation of arbitrage opportunities; reduced customer long distance choices; and destruction of the interstate pooling process.” NTCA CEO Michael Brunner said “simply put, the study results show that COBAK is not a financially feasible concept for rural ILECs.” The FCC in 2001 proposed replacing current intercarrier compensation regimes with B&K and the inter-industry group that’s meeting to devise a possible recommendation to the FCC on intercarrier compensation also has been considering B&K. NTCA included the survey results in a position paper “Bill and Keep: Is It Right for Rural America.” The paper explains that 2 types of B&K regimes were proposed by the FCC in 2001 but COBAK has drawn the most interest and debate in the industry.