If you're like most people, the bill you receive from your phone company can seem like it's written in Arabic. Acronyms, codes and strange terms populate the document and could leave you shaking your head. After stumbling through a few paragraphs, trying to decipher the code, you could easily give up and just pay the bill. You might start to wonder if that's what the phone company is hoping for.
But it's important for a business to analyze its phone bills. Unnecessary services, third party charges, duplicate fees can appear on your billing, like telecom parasites.
Here's a list of taxes and surcharges that might appear on your phone bill, what they mean and who receives the money. The list might not make you fluent in phone company, but it will at least help you better understand what you're paying for.
Charge for Network Access, also known as the Subscriber Line Charge, FCC charge, Interstate Access Charge, Federal Access Charge or a few other varieties, is a charge that covers the cost and maintenance of the local phone network. It's a charge that every carrier charges, but it's not a government charge and no money goes to the Federal government. The only involvement the government has with this fee is that it determines the maximum a carrier can charge.
Universal Connectivity Fee is a contribution to the Universal Service Fund. The fund was established by the Federal government in an attempt to make phone service affordable and available to all Americans. All phone companies providing interstate service must contribute to the Universal Service Fund. Some carriers have decided to pass this charge on to their customers.
Local Number Portability, or LNP, is a fee established by carriers, and permitted by the Federal government, to recover the cost of making phone numbers portable - the ability to move a phone number from one provider to another. Number portability is essential for open competition in the phone service industry and is mandated by the Federal government. A carrier is only allowed to charge this fee for five years from the date the charge was first established on a customer's phone bill.
Emergency 911 is a fee collected by phone companies and passed on to local governments to help pay for emergency services.
Telecommunications Relay (TRS) is a fee that is collected to help pay for the relay center that translates calls for the hearing and speech impaired.
Federal Excise Tax is a three percent surcharge applied to local phone service charges that are billed separately from long distance service.
John Gelhard
Co-Founder CarrierBid Communications
johngelhard@carrierbid.com
888-706-5656 ext. 701
CarrierBid can save you money on your business's voice and data services. We don't charge a fee or ask for a share of your savings. Visit our website to request a quote, a bill audit or consultation.
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