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A hybrid Universal Service Fund contribution mechanism using phon...

A hybrid Universal Service Fund contribution mechanism using phone numbers and connections beats one using numbers and revenue, AT&T and Verizon said. The carriers, which would prefer a numbers-only mechanism, pitched an alternative hybrid method in a Monday FCC…

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filing. That plan would levy a fixed $0.85 rate on assessable residential, wireless and business numbers, and establish a new “assessable connection” category, AT&T and Verizon said. Assessable connections up to 64 kbps would pay $5 per dedicated connection, with faster connections paying $35 per connection, the companies said. Adopting the alternate plan would cut consumer share of USF contributions to about 38 percent, they said. The business sector would pay about 62 percent of USF contributions. The portion of USF collected from special access and other dedicated connections would rise to 16 percent from today’s 8 percent, the telcos said. If the FCC exempts some from paying into USF by numbers, it shouldn’t do so in a way that would “require alternate calculation methodologies or that maintain [today’s] revenue methodology,” AT&T and Verizon said. Instead, the agency should adopt a reimbursement method “whereby the customer is billed and pays the full [charge] per number,” but then can ask the Universal Service Administrative Co. for a partial refund, they said.