Conflicts among state universal service assessment methods for Vo...
Conflicts among state universal service assessment methods for VoIP necessitate a single national policy, Vonage said. The FCC can address existing conflicts and prevent new ones “by permitting providers to allocate subscribers’ revenues among the states on the basis…
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of any reasonable data, including place of primary use, billing address, phone number, or E911 location, so long as the provider uses the same basis for all customers,” the company said. The approach “would allow providers to use assessment methods that are consistent with existing billing systems,” and would be less confusing for consumers, it said. “Granting providers flexibility to choose assessment bases (so long as the same basis is used for all customers) would allow providers to use the same basis for state USF obligations as for state sales or other tax obligations, and thereby avoid the customer confusion that would arise if customer bills were to show taxes from one state and state USF pass-throughs from another.” Opening a rulemaking is the fastest path to a national policy, Vonage said. States have urged the commission to reject the company’s proposal (CD Nov 3 p8).