ROODE@BIONET-20.ARPA (David Roode) (06/25/87)
Discussion of FCC recommendations on access fees (from UNISON, The Source and The WELL) PORTED FROM UNISON PARTI CONFERENCE "ICCU" May not be ported without credit to its sources. --------------------------------------- "ICCU" by MAVEN, Jan. 25, 1987 at 20:42 Eastern about THE INTERNATIONAL COMPUTER COMMUNICATIONS UNION (105 notes) 89 (of 105) GENJI Jun. 13, 1987 at 17:57 Eastern (2115 characters) Ported from the Source... 1 (of 8) SAM SIMON Jun. 11, 1987 at 23:12 (2028 characters) On June 10, 1987, the FCC proposed to revoke a 1982 exemption for VANS, also referred to as "enhanced service providers", from access fees for access to local exchange companys. What this means, if enacted, is that telenet, tymnet, mci mail and others who provide interstate data service will have to pay the same fees for access to local telephone companies as voice users do. Here is how it will work: Each call, voice or data, will have to pay the following fees: "originating access" the cost of leaving the local network and being carried to the point of presence of the carrier, .69 cents per minute. This means if you are in Columbus, calling to the Source in Mclean, you have to pay Ohio bell .69 cents per mintue for the cost of carrying your data call from your home to Telenet's node (point of presence)in the Columbus calling area. Right now if you were to make a call voer MCI or AT&T, "voice" , you would pay that same charge to have the call carried from your home to those companies "point of presence." Your call is then carried to McLean Va and terminates, perhaps, at C&P telephone who then takes to the Source in McLean. If that is the case, then there is a charge of 4.33 cents per minute for terminating access, or the cost of taking the call from telenet node to source location. Again, if there were a voice call that would be paid for carriage from the long ditance co. point of presence to destination. In addition, there is about a 3.45 cents per minute "variable cost" chage. The first two charges are based on paying part of the fixed cost of the local network. The latst charge is the added variable cost added by the call. Voice users have been paying these costs since 1982. The FCC had exempted VANS on policy grounds, and now wish to revoke the exemption. Is it fair to have voice pay more than data for the identical services? What are the argumetns for or against this change? Will you reduce your calling if the cost goes up $5.00 an hour? What can be done about it?
ron@topaz.rutgers.edu (Ron Natalie) (06/25/87)
What you fail to recognize is that I am already paying for it. I have to pay intra-lata voice charges already to carry my data to the point-of-presence. Sometimes it is a local call and hence only costs me 8 cents, but frequently it is not. Voice LongDistance carriers get service for the access fee they pay. The phone company connects them from their point of presence to the user and provides various essential signalling. While this mode of access makes sense when the RBOCs provide data service to my house (ISDN), it is little more than an attempt to expand the BOC monopoly for the "data through the voice channel" network. -Ron