The FCC should grant a Cingular request that it reverse course an...
The FCC should grant a Cingular request that it reverse course and include revenues classified as “toll” charges under the wireless safe harbor for USF, CTIA said. Under FCC rules, the Commission doesn’t seek supporting data from wireless carriers…
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on the percentage of calls that are interstate and so subject to USF fees, instead of intrastate, provided a carrier assumes that 28.5% of calls are subject to USF. The problem, Cingular told the FCC in a complaint, is that instructions on a 2002 worksheet for calculating USF payments keep it from applying the safe harbor to toll calls. Cingular said this apparent inconsistency in the worksheet requires it to make “significant additional contributions” for toll calls. “The Commission did not qualify the availability of the safe harbor and, indeed, it would have been antithetical to the purpose of the safe harbor for it to have done so,” CTIA said. “When it addressed the wireless safe harbor again in 2002, the Commission did not suggest any limitation on its application.” CTIA said the issue hits other carriers. “The inappropriately narrow application of the wireless safe harbor has concerned CTIA and its members for at least two years, and CTIA urges the Commission to grant Cingular’s request,” CTIA said.