detnews.com
One-rate phone service packages on horizon
Long-distance calls over Web help users avoid access fees
By David Judson / Gannett News Service
WASHINGTON -- Like many a consumer, Mike Hardiman longs for the day when real
one-stop shopping and pricing will come to the fistful of different phone bills he has to manage
every month.
"All you see on TV is ads for one rate, one rate. But there is no one rate," said Hardiman, a
self-employed researcher of property law who now has five phone lines to his name and is on
his way to six. "All I want is simplicity."
The good news for the Hardimans of the world is that the much-predicted day of
Internet-style, one-rate "all you can eat" local and long-distance phone service is on the horizon.
Make a long-distance phone call over the Internet, which some companies now enable
phone-to-phone, and you and the carrier avoid access fees at both ends of the conversation
that traditional phone companies have to pay.
Similarly, as much as $4 billion in annual charges to subsidize phone service to under-served areas are spread across rates that
some start-up phone companies can avoid. Even the meaning of "under-served" is debated as service to wealthy but rural
communities like Vail, Colo., or Bretton Woods, N.H., which continue to enjoy subsidies paid by city-dwellers.
Those issues are now largely in the domain of the Federal Communications Commission, which is expected by summer to
make a series of decisions that could dramatically alter the regulatory landscape and accelerate the simple packaging of service.
A coalition of local and long-distance phone companies has proposed to the FCC that it consolidate special charges into a
single standard fee. That would boost the usual residential line charges from two line items now averaging $3.50 to about $5.
Many fees paid among phone companies -- such as connection fees between long-distance and local providers -- would be
reduced or eliminated. In exchange, phone companies would cut rates for so-called "lifeline" service to customers who use only a
minimum of telephone time. |
