The National Telecom Cooperative Assn. (NTCA) raised concerns wit...

wrote Sununu Mon. to present 4 primary concerns with the bill: (1) The exemption from access charges that VoIP would get could cripple rural carriers. NTCA said a recent survey showed a “bill and keep” regime as proposed in the bill would cost rural carriers $2 billion annually. “The bill also encourages private negotiations for access compensation, which is an approach that has not worked in the past and has resulted in the loss of millions of dollars in rural carrier cost recovery from the wireless industry,” the letter said. (2) Universal service fund (USF) burdens would be shifted towards rural carriers, because the bill proposes a connections-based USF contribution methodology. “The impact of the flat-fee nature of this approach would be particularly harsh on low-volume users such as rural and elderly residential consumers,” the letter said. (3) VoIP providers would have the same requirements to open their networks to law enforcement as “information service providers.” “Yet, the law enforcement community is not certain it has the statutory authority to require information service providers to comply with such laws,” the letter said: “This would provide such carriers with a competitive advantage over incumbent carriers.” (4) An exemption of VoIP from state and local tax would also prove to be problematic because it “offers VoIP providers a competitive advantage over ILECs that currently do pay state and local taxes on their voice service.”