VoIP Operators Say Traffic Studies for Calculating USF May Offer Little Relief
Many VoIP providers may have to rely on a proposed 64.9% safe harbor to figure their universal service contributions, rather than being able to use traffic studies such as those the wireless industry uses, VoIP and wireless carrier sources said Fri. To wireless carriers’ relief, the FCC is signaling it will keep allowing traffic studies showing actual call volume as an alternative to using the safe harbor, sources said. Wireless carriers voiced alarm after reports surfaced (CD May 31 p1) the FCC planned to hike their safe harbor to 37.1% from 28.5%.
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But many VoIP providers may not have that alternative to safe harbor. VoIP providers may not even be offered a chance to submit traffic studies to justify contributions below the threshold. If they are, calculations could prove difficult.
On the wireless side, such studies often track caller location, based on the nearest celltower, versus location of the number called. VoIP providers offering plug-in anywhere nomadic service couldn’t fix a call’s origin - was it made from a home in Topeka or from a hotel room in Tulsa?
“It would be hard to do,” a lawyer who follows USF issues said: “You'd have to make some assumptions. You have to hope that you get wrong the same number of calls that were really interstate instead of intrastate as you do that are intrastate instead of interstate, and it balances itself out… You'd have to come up with something either based on billing address or something or it would have to be a proxy. There’s no way to determine the physical location.”
An attorney for VoIP operators said the companies would have to make assumptions - such as using the MPA-PXXs on both sides of a call to peg location. Wireless carriers often must make assumptions and studies also aren’t 100% accurate, the lawyer said: “There’s really no fixed method for traffic studies in wireless. In the wireless context it’s already an approximation. It’s not so different in VoIP… It’s also my understanding that some wireless carriers use NPA-NXX on both sides.”
“Obviously it’s far more complicated than for wireless,” another attorney who represents VoIP operators said: “We don’t have any of the same information, especially with nomadic services.” The fee could hurt low-cost VoIP service competitiveness, he said, noting that for a customer with a typical $25 monthly bill, the net monthly hit would be an extra $1.75 for USF.
Most cable operators offering telephony can do traffic studies relatively easily, since on their systems calls usually already are separated, with long distance calls sent to a separate trunk and handled by a long distance carrier, an attorney for cable operators said, noting that Vonage and other nomadic services would face more difficulty tracking calls. “When you assign an out-of-region number to somebody, you start trouble right there,” the source said: “If people here can have San Francisco numbers what does it mean?”
The debate shows regulation is lagging behind a changing telecom world, other sources said. “It’s another example of where you're creating a tethered world where a nomadic world is preferable,” Jonathan Askin, gen. counsel to Pulver.com said: “At some point government has to recognize that distinction is irrelevant and that voice is only an application.”
Several VoIP providers, and the VON Coalition, have been at the FCC in recent days with concerns about the order, set for a vote at the June agenda meeting. A recurring question, sources said, has been how the FCC arrived at the 64.9% safe harbor. “There’s no record on this particular issue,” a regulatory attorney said: “The record has been developing in the last week since this proposal circulated.”