WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission said BellSouth Corp. and other incumbent local exchange carriers can recover from their customers the costs of implementing intermodal porting.
“BellSouth has estimated that, if allowed additional recovery, it would alternatively charge end users 22 cents over a six-month period, 43 cents over a three-month period, or impose a one-time charge of $1.21. We do not believe that allowing such limited additional recovery harms the policy underlying the five-year rule. Specifically, it does not produce unreasonable charges for customers or impose on them for an unduly long period. We further note that precluding BellSouth from recovering its intermodal LNP implementation costs would undercut the first-stated policy goal, which is to enable ILECs to recover their portability costs in a timely fashion,” said the FCC.
ILECs were given five years in 1999 to recover implementation costs for local number portability, but that deadline is fast approaching with many costs of implementing intermodal porting only now being realized. So BellSouth asked the FCC to waive the five-year deadline. Sprint Corp., when it commented in support of the BellSouth request, said that when it tried to include intermodal porting costs in its original cost-recovery proposal, FCC staff said it was speculative.
“Sprint relates that, in its 1999 tariff filing it did attempt to recover projected costs associated with implementation of intermodal LNP. Sprint states that FCC staff directed it to remove over $10 million of operating systems support costs from its 1999 filing because, given the status of intermodal LNP at that time, associated costs were too speculative,” said the commission.
Wireless carriers and other competitive LECs are allowed to recover their LNP costs from their customers without first asking permission and they do not have a five-year restriction. Some have chosen to line-item these charges while others have just rolled the amount into the service plan rates.
BellSouth said it would file the necessary cost data with the FCC “in short order and hope that they will act on it quickly, so we can simply extend the existing LNP charge at an appropriate rate.”
FCC Commissioner Michael Copps said the commission had failed to be precise in previous rules regarding LNP costs, and BellSouth’s request pointed out the need for the agency to be more diligent in its truth-in-billing efforts.
“The proliferation of line items for number portability and other charges have irritated and confused consumers across the country. With so many end-user charges that differ from carrier to carrier, comparing carriers and plans is like comparing apples to oranges. Consumers need a way to compare apples to apples. They need meaningful and accurate information on their bills, not an explosion of line items that can serve as smokescreens for costs they do not understand,” said Copps.
