FCC Tariff Changes Mean No More Free Conference Calls 76
kgeiger writes "The FCC is changing the call termination tariffs that subsidized rural wireline service and coincidentally free conference calls. Free conference call services had located their dial-in centers in rural areas to scoop up FCC tariffs from its Universal Service Fund. USF monies will go to broadband deployment instead. Be prepared to put more nickels in the box." On the other hand, maybe ad-driven Internet services (whether free or "freemium") will step in to the free-conference gap with some good-enough options, as they have for many other services, like email and faxing.
Re:IEEE Shameless Promotion for Speek (Score:5, Interesting)
I work for FreeConference
The USF is not an "access fee", it's a tax. Companies like FreeConference do benefit from access fees, which is the settlement mechanism present in virtually all calls you make and receive. Carriers charge each other access fees to transport a call through the network. When AT&T hands off a call to a local exchange carrier (LEC), the LEC gets a small piece of the bill they collect from their customer. This is how it has worked at least since the telecom reforms of 1996. Just about any call you make on the public switched telephone network generates access fees for all the entities that handle your call. However, if all those entities are AT&T, AT&T doesn't complain about it. When they have to hand off the call to an independent, entrepreneurial LEC, they scream bloody murder.
USF is entirely different. This is a tax, not a tarif, and although some rural LECs benefit from that, that money does NOT flow to conference service providers.
Re:Broadband deployment. (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I live out in the middle of freaking nowhere. The best Internet access we can get here is GSM. (Sometimes, depending on the weather. We're a long ways from the tower.) We can't even get satellite here because the phone lines for the terrestrial upstream aren't good enough to transmit data.
At least that was until last week when they laid fiber. And now we can actually, you know, use the internet without driving half an hour. Which is great because one of us out here is in a wheel chair and that half hour drive to town is no insignificant challenge.
Turn off your internet for a week, see how much different your life is. Now try a year. At this point not having internet access in the US means you don't even know about most popular culture.
So some of the money was spent. And it was spent on something that we never could have gotten any other way, and we are very grateful to everyone who subsidized it.