Industry Partners Sends Letter to FCC on 8YY Access Charges

Today, trade associations representing small and mid-size ILECs and large and small cable providers, as well as carriers Frontier and Windstream, sent a letter to the FCC expressing concerns about moving to a bill-and-keep regime for 8YY access charges. In the letter, the signers said that, “We believe that it would be more prudent immediately to take targeted actions to address such abusive schemes while the Commission more fully examines the appropriate treatment of legitimate 8YY traffic for compensation purposes. In particular, as part of an examination into the reasonableness of 8YY rates, the Commission should carefully consider whether a bill-and-keep regime is warranted in the case of 8YY calls, as this would result in shifting costs from businesses to end-user customers. Ultimately, consumers will suffer as rates increase to subsidize a business service.”