How do I tell what all these charges are on my bill and if they are normal?
Well in a previous blog post we talked about cramming.
We talked about carefully reviewing the telephone bill for any charges that you the consumer do not understand.
This review, as stated in that post, also applies to pager and cell phone bills as well.
The problem is most consumers are not familiar with what charges should be on a phone bill.

The FCC does a very good job speaking of this in their website and provides a lot of detail.

I will display the traditional charges for the landline phone bill below. Please visit the FCC site as it gives much more information to include; Scam Alerts, Wireless phone information, accessibility information, and legal rights of the consumer.

911 – This charge is imposed by local governments to help pay for emergency services such as fire and rescue.

Federal Excise Tax – This is a three percent tax mandated by the federal government (not the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)). It is imposed on all telecommunications services, including local, long distance and wireless services.

(Federal) Subscriber Line Charge – This charge covers the costs of the local phone network. This charge may appear as “FCC Charge for Network Access,” “Federal Line Cost Charge,” “Interstate Access Charge,” “Federal Access Charge,” “Interstate Single Line Charge,” “Customer Line Charge” or “FCC-Approved Customer Line Charge.” The FCC sets the maximum allowable Federal Subscriber Line Charge. This is not a government charge or tax, and it does not end up in the U.S. treasury.

Local Number Portability (LNP) Charge – The FCC allows local telephone companies to recover certain costs for providing telephone number portability to its customers. Telephone number portability allows residential and business customers to retain, at the same location, their existing local telephone numbers when switching from one local telephone service provider to another. The LNP Charge is a fixed, monthly charge. Local telephone companies may continue to assess this charge on their customers’ telephone bills for five years from the date the local telephone company first began itemizing the charge on the bill. This charge is not a tax.

State & Local Municipal Tax – This charge is imposed by state, local, and municipal governments on goods and services. It may also appear as a “gross receipts” tax in some states.

(State) Subscriber Line Charge – This charge is mandated by some states’ public service or utility commissions to compensate the local phone company for part of the cost of providing local telephone lines associated with state services, such as intrastate long distance and local exchange service.

Telecommunications Relay Services Charge – This state charge helps to pay for the relay center that transmits and translates calls for hearing-impaired and speech-impaired people.

In the next post we will discuss even more charges to look for that are to be expected on your bill.

Most consumers of telecommunications and information technology services are walking around with blinders on. Big name providers of services, that I will not mention, have applied these blinders from years of commercial advertisement.

Most feel that the telecommunications de-regulation in the late 90’s helped the consumer. In some ways I think it did, but in some ways it did not. To me it seems all the deregulation did was allow for monopolies to reappear. As an example let us look at some of the recent buyouts. One of the largest providers of telecommunications services buys out the largest provider of wireless cell service. This particular provider is already in partnership with one of the two largests satellite TV companies and promoting that companies services. They even advertise a discount on data services if you’re that satellite TV company’s customer or a subscriber to their telephone service.

I am not downplaying these carriers or their product. Hell, they do a very good job of keeping the consumer in the dark by applying these “blinders”. What most consumers do not know is that they do have choices outside of these larger providers.
Smaller companies provide a low cost alternative for the same services these larger providers offer.

The services provided by these smaller low cost companies run the table, from long distance telephone, to VOIP, to Internet access.

Big companies offer incentives like unlimited long distance phone service for $29.95. This “Unlimited” offer attracts lots of customers. They are attracted by the flat rate that is offered no matter the calling patterns. In fact most customers do not require unlimited service. Most customers have only dealt with big name companies and their high per minute rates. So when an unlimited plan is offered it seems to the customer that they are saving when in reality they are not.

For an example, to see for yourself look at your last phone bill and calculate up the long distance minutes and write those down. Separate the interstate (outside your state) and the intrastate (inside your state) long distance. Write these numbers down.

Now go to the advanced calculator provided by Brochin.net free of charge. Enter in the information you wrote down and compare to your current bill. I would wager you would save by switching to one or more of the carriers the calculator lists. Try the advance long distance calculator and seperate high speed Internet shopping services to cost compare.

Stop being blinded and controlled by the hype of the big corporate monsters.

In recent months some in the telecommunications industry have started becoming disturbed by recent mergers and acquisitions between companies in the telecommunications industry.

In November of 2005, SBC acquired AT&T. With this acquisition SBC/AT&T became the largest provider of local and long distance telephone services, DSL, and data services in the United States and one of the largest providers in the world.

Recently the planned merger of AT&T with BellSouth has been announced. Both companies have approximately a 50/50 share of Cingular wireless services.

What makes this so ironic is that both SBC and BellSouth where “baby bells” at one time. The “baby bells” where the result of the breakup of the AT&T monopoly in the 1980′s.

So are we seeing the re-establishment of the AT&T monopoly? Some experts feel the answer is no because competition in the industry is much better than when the Ma Bell of old was broken up. Others, to include myself, feel this is the beginning of a new and even larger monster for the telecommunications industry.

When will the mergers and acquisitions be stopped? It probably will not. Why is it that we can never learn from history? With the breakup of AT&T in the 1980′s, competition and consumer savings was seen immediately throughout the telecommunications industry. So why now are we letting this monster take root again?

Other concerns for the telecommunications industry arise with the Sprint/Nextel merger. So why should the consumer be concerned? Simple.

We as consumers have been enjoying the savings of the competition in the telecommunications industry because of all the small independent companies and competitors. When cellular and VOIP technology started taking hold, the traditional companies became scared, they knew they had to get their foot in the door. What better way to do this than to use the large purse they have to start buying them out or merge.

Look in the future for cable and satellite services to fall victim to these large corporate behemoths.

So in my opinion, look out, because history is about to repeat itself in the next few years and all those lovely prices for services we have seen in the telecommunications industry over the years will be gone.

Lets hear your thoughts?

Why is it that consumers are still paying taxes to fight the Spanish-American War?

Oh yes folks, you are paying for a war that has long passed and been paid for a long time ago.

In 1898 the IRS levied a tax on traditional telephone communications to help pay for the Spanish-American War. At this time in history, telephones where a luxury and mostly owned by the more affluent citizens. Currently this tax has expanded to include wireless providers as well.

Most residential consumers are not affected too much by this tax, but larger businesses with several thousand long distance calls are losing thousands of dollars to this tax. This type of taxation is one reason businesses are moving to Voice Over IP (VOIP) networks. VOIP networks are not subject to this type of tax and reduce the Total Cost of Ownership to the business. If you would like to know more detail about reducing total cost of ownership with VOIP, please read my published and highly distributed article titled “Lower your Total Cost of Ownership With Virtual Office Voip While Adding Flexibility for Small and Medium-sized Businesses”.

The IRS is currently doing battle with the phone companies who are trying to eliminate the tax. I am not a big fan of some of the larger telecommunications companies, but for this battle they have my vote. They also seem to have the vote of our federal court system as well. Three federal courts have determined the tax to be invalid, to include the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The crazy deal with this is that the IRS is still collecting the tax. The Supreme Court does not have yet to become involved in this, nor does common sense allow for them to. The fact that an appeal was even entertained is amazing.

This is a prime example of a rogue government agency. Our court systems have deemed the taxation invalid, but the IRS continues to levy it. Who will stop them?

Some companies have filed suit against the IRS, one of which is Radio Shack. It seems that corporate America will have to use the power of lobby and money to force politicians to take action as the IRS has basically thumbed its nose at our court system.

So as a residential customer are you powerless?

No! You can do one of two things.

1.) Write your elected officials about this illegal taxation
2.) Change to VOIP and avoid this scandalous tax. (which the IRS is going after as well)