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The Real Truth on Wide Area Calling charges

By Vic Jackson, President

Interconnection Services, Inc. 

September 11, 2003

Robbery, these days is pretty easy to accomplish. Compose a note that says, “Give me money” and visit your nearest bank. This method is recommended only as a last resort because you are likely to be sent to prison for an extended stay for a lousy few thousand bucks that you don’t get to keep. However, if you are a bit smarter and want to really make some dough, get into the telecommunications business and send people bogus bills for services they didn’t receive. Your local telephone company has been doing this for many years and I have yet to read that someone in the phone company, excepting those idiots at WorldCom, was even accused of robbery or fraud, let alone be convicted. Really, the only mistake the WorldCom folks have made was greed. When you start taking billions instead of mere millions, you get people’s attention.

Billing for Wide Area Calling services (Otherwise known as “reverse billing”, “LATA-Wide Calling” or Standard Billing Alternative”) is a prime example of a fraud I think should be referred to, in the Court system, for the sake of less charming words, as “robbery by telephone bill”.

Here’s the story. Way back in ancient history, before the Telecommunications Act of 1996, paging and cellular carriers were required to pay for the privilege of receiving call traffic originated by the landline companies. The wireless companies were not only required to pay a usage charge but also paid for the interconnection facilities used to receive local call traffic. This was obviously a “double dip” on the part of the phone companies because historically, the cost studies the phone companies so grandly produced for the state regulatory commissions to justify their tariff charges, always showed that the originating telephone line paid for delivery of a local call to the terminating central office. It’s always a good thing finance-wise, for a telephone company to collect for the same facility or service from more than one source. Just don’t get caught by the state commission. But efforts to correct this excessive “recovery” of costs by the wireless carriers were ignored or obfuscated by the LECs.  Additionally, as part of the growing pains of a new business in the 1980’s, wireless carriers struggled with providing “local” phone numbers for their subscribers. Paging and cellular systems covered much larger geographic areas than the traditional landline exchange areas. It was (and still is) a problem to provide a telephone number to a wireless subscriber that receives calls from multiple landline local exchange areas, yet is not “roaming” with respect to the paging or cellular system. To get around this problem in the 1980’s, the wireless carriers, after much controversy and some informal pressure at the FCC, convinced the LEC’s to provision “Wide Area Calling” specifically to alleviate the “local” calling problem for wireless subscribers. In essence, a “special” NXX code was assigned to the wireless carrier that was provisioned by the LEC in multiple LEC end offices in multiple local exchange areas. This was called a “distributed” or “dedicated” NXX code.   Callers could dial the same seven-digit number in many local exchanges throughout a Local Access Transport Area (LATA) to reach a given wireless subscriber. Of course the LEC’s created a tariff to cover this situation and charged for this special “service” in addition to their other charges for interconnection. 

When the FCC got around to making the rules to allow “competition” in the local exchange, as mandated by Congress in 1996, they determined that wireless carriers were entitled to the same interconnection as the newly ordained Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLEC’s), with one major exception. The geographic local exchange area for CLEC’s and all other landline carriers was defined as being whatever the state commission established. In almost all cases, the state commissions have made the CLEC’s adhere to the same exchange areas as the incumbent LEC.  However, the FCC decreed that local telecommunications traffic for wireless carriers would be defined as; “telecommunications traffic between a LEC and a CMRS provider that, at the beginning of the call, originates and terminates within the same Major Trading Area” (MTA).  Additionally, the FCC preceded this definition with; “The provisions of this subpart [§51.701] apply to reciprocal compensation for transport and termination of local telecommunications traffic between LEC’s and other telecommunications carriers.” 

In other words, the local exchange area for wireless calls is now, and has been since November of 1996, the MTA. MTA’s are statistically derived, precisely defined and mapped in part 24 of the FCC rules. In most cases MTA’s are very large geographic areas encompassing all or parts of multiple states. Under the FCC’s 1996 definitions of “telecommunications traffic” for wireless carriers, the only landline-to-mobile calls that can possibly qualify for Wide Area Calling charges are those calls that cross an MTA boundary. Since the LEC’s in most instances cannot carry traffic across LATA lines, the net effect of all this is that Wide Area Calling has been limited to within LATA’s. So the only landline-to-mobile calls that can logically be charged Wide Area Calling charges are those calls that originate within a LATA and cross an MTA boundary, which is most likely, a very small percentage of land-to-mobile calls.

Therefore, because LEC’s are only authorized to bill Wide Area Calling charges for Inter-MTA calls, any bills sent to wireless carriers for facilities or usage not provided to deliver Inter-MTA calls are unlawful according to FCC rules. This is because all Intra-MTA land-to-mobile calls are calls that fall under the reciprocal compensation provisions of the FCC’s rules. Put another way, if a land-to-mobile call is not a toll call, then “access”, “toll” or “toll equivalent” charges cannot apply. Additionally, if the wireless carrier has an interconnection agreement with an LEC, it is entirely likely that the wireless carrier should be billing reciprocal compensation charges for terminating the Wide Area Calling telecommunications traffic originated by the LEC. 

 I am not alone in my conclusions regarding land-to-mobile calling. In May 2002 the Iowa Utilities Board issued an Order that exactly supports the notion that Intra-MTA calls are “local” calls.  Page 12 of the Order says in part:

“First, the Board rejects the ITA’s [Iowa Telecommunications Association] assertion that there are technical barriers to treating intraMTA calls as local. The fact that multiple ITA members already do precisely that for their own affiliate, Iowa Wireless, is sufficient evidence to demonstrate there are no insurmountable technical barriers.

Second, the Board rejects ITA’s argument that the Board is somehow requiring that the independent LECs provide local service outside their service territories. First, the LECs will not be offering service to any customers outside their service territories; they will only be offering their existing customers, all of whom are located within their service territory, the ability to make a local call as a local call, even though the called party may be physically located outside the LEC’s exchange.

As a legal matter, this is no different from extended area service, or EAS, which is statutorily-defined as a basic local telephone service, see Iowa Code § 476.96.

Docket No. SPU-00-7, TF-00-275 (DRU-00-2)

Additionally, a Montana Federal District Court came to a similar conclusion with respect to land-to-mobile calls in a December 2000 Order. 3 Rivers Telephone Cooperative v. U S West Communications, Inc., United States District Court in The District of Montana, Great Falls Division, Civil Case No. CV-99-080-GF-RFC, 12/13/2000.

And so if you are a wireless carrier that has been paying Ma Bell for Wide Area Calling or similar named services, call ‘em up and give ‘em hell!! Ask them to explain why those pesky FCC rules do not apply to the charges they have been making you pay. Better yet, demand a refund of all those unlawful charges. Call the cops on this one, it’s a clear case of Robbery by Telephone Bill.

Things are happening in the Paging Industry!

April 16, 2004

Special Report to the Brad Dye Newsletter

By Vic Jackson, Interconnection Services, Inc.

 A couple of years ago, it appeared that paging as an industry, did not have a future. The large paging carriers were going bankrupt, cell phone pricing had declined to be competitive with paging, and instant text messaging service was being introduced using cell phones. Who wanted or needed a one-way pager or a cumbersome two-way text pager when you can carry a cell phone for the same price? And these trends continue. But, in a remarkable bit of both business acumen and luck, this gloom and doom on the horizon for the paging business has not happened. Instead, the paging business, especially the smaller regional and statewide one-way paging carriers, has developed some specialty markets that have blossomed into a viable and growing industry.  All of this renewed business by the common carrier paging operators is due to several items that have been resurrected out of the dusty attic of the paging industry.

 Customer Service

Customer service is number one on the list of how the new breed of paging carriers have managed to survive. Low prices and remote control mass-market customer relations don’t cut the mustard any more for a basic technology that has been around for decades. Business customers increasingly are provided with in-house spares, 24/7 services for system outages, and tested, proven coverage. These kinds of services are the norm in customer service by the new breed of paging providers. Carriers have also made it as easy as possible to send alphanumeric messages by providing both Internet access and modem lines in combination with custom software or dedicated alphanumeric desktop keyboards for customer messaging.

 Coverage

There is also the matter of reliable coverage. The established paging systems cover areas that cellular and other forms of radio communications do not. For instance, many paging operations cover rural areas and remote communities. The high power, multi-site paging systems also can be configured to cover hard-to-reach urban areas inside large buildings and other cellular dead spots. An on-site paging transmitter is also commonplace where coverage inside the customer premises is paramount. In the old days, a single transmitter was expected to cover a city and the surrounding areas. Not any more. A modern paging system can involve tens if not hundreds of paging sites and can be connected via Telocator Network Paging Protocol (TNPP) to other systems as well.

 New design paging receivers, because they operate on widely diverse frequencies such as the 150 MHz and 450 MHz bands, as well as the 900 MHz band, in general, do not have the receive interference problems that cellular phones experience which is caused by interference from other nearby cell sites as well as other two-way radio communications systems. This hidden technical advantage allows the pager to work reliably where other communications fail.

Battery Life

The new breeds of paging receivers are smaller, lighter, have bigger screens and will operate for longer periods of time on a single battery. Battery life is one of the significant advantages over a cell phone that requires daily charging and other battery hassles, if the user makes many calls in a day. The pager operates for a month or more on a single, disposable, low cost battery.

Low, Fixed Cost Telecommunications

One-way paging has always been one of the most cost-efficient means of personal communications. Commodity pricing for paging service in the 1990’s put many of those practitioners into bankruptcy and out of the paging business. Instead, the successful carriers in business today have maintained a fair price, while bringing value to the users. When the overall price of competing technology such as cell phones and two-way radios is considered in relation to the telecommunications wants and needs of the customers, paging wins both in price and value.

No Transmit Requirement

Additionally, there are some specialty markets that need a reliable communications system where the units cannot transmit a radio signal. Some hospitals and several industrial/business operations have requirements that preclude using cellular phones, two-way radios and other RF emitting radio devices. The one-way pager is the only viable, reliable and economical way to maintain personal, secure communications under these circumstances. 

Security/Backup Communications

There is also a growing market for one-way as well as two-way text paging that has developed as a result of increased security measures and awareness of the shortfalls in cellular and two-way radio technologies, especially during crisis situations and disasters. Unfortunately, cellular systems can accommodate only a relatively limited number of users in a particular geographic area at any given time. And once call blocking occurs in a cellular or two-way system due to some unusual situation, the system becomes relatively useless to public safety and other public service agencies. First-responders and other public safety personnel can be contacted easily and quickly via a common carrier pager, especially when their normal communications channels are either being heavily used, or are otherwise unavailable. A common carrier pager is a cheap telecommunications insurance policy in these situations. An alternate means of personal contact is also very valuable when the normal communications channels are subject to monitoring by the public, the press or other more hostile possibilities. Paging is a great way to provide diverse, and secure routing of messages, along with all of the other operational advantages the common carrier paging system provides.

Future Emergency Mass Messaging

Currently, some in the paging industry are working on ways to be able to deliver a common message or messages, to many individuals at once, over a large geographic area, during times of crisis. This capability is very much needed because of the limitations in all of the current telecommunications systems that can induce significant delays when a large number of individually coded units are accessed at the same time. A common mass messaging capability would allow a large number of people to be alerted to a crisis situation in seconds, rather than the minutes or even hours sometimes needed now for such notifications. There are some technical and operational problems to be overcome, but this appears to be a future bright light for the paging industry.

Paging has been the ugly stepchild of the telecommunications industry. Most outside the industry assumed paging was going to disappear in the shadow of the mighty cellular operations, owned in large part by the former Bell companies, which have consolidated into deep pocket behemoths. But paging has found new life by working to find those things the other guys can’t provide. Remember, the harder you work, the luckier you get.