WASHINGTON-While call blocking may be the easiest and quickest way of preventing pay-phone operators and long-distance carriers from charging excessive access fees on toll-free calls to messaging providers, all three industries realize that implementing this feature may be impossible in a global sense, and that there are other solutions to the problem.
Meanwhile, some paging providers are being billed by long-distance carriers to cover the new pay-phone charges that were authorized by changes in regulations.
The Federal Communications Commission currently is pondering reply comments to a petition for reconsideration of the commission’s new pay phone rules adopted Oct. 9. Paging carriers and alphanumeric dispatch providers alike are fighting costs of up to 35 cents per call made by subscribers via pay phones to access messages, saying it will undo the industry’s reputation for low-cost communications. Even some pay-phone carriers say they are beginning to feel the financial repercussions of reduced traffic on their units due to call blocking.
According to American Alpha Dispatchers Inc. and other providers including National Dispatch Center and Affordable Message Center Inc., the FCC “has done a poor job of informing the public of the impending change in how pay telephone operators are compensated for toll-free calls … dispatching parties, who are not commission licensees, only became aware of the additional charge being levied when informed after the fact by the various interexchange carriers.”
While the carriers have no problem in providing just compensation to pay-phone operators, they want the caller-and not the carriers-to bear the brunt of the cost at the coin box. “The RBOC Coalition’s … claim that the paging industry and others are special interests who just want a continued free ride on the coalition’s investment rings extremely hollow,” Alpha Dispatch wrote. “First, the dispatching parties are not sure what makes a special interest in this proceeding, but if the 800/888 number holder who ends up paying an additional 35 cents per pay telephone call makes one special, then certainly the dispatching parties are very special … Second, there has never been a free ride by 800/888 number holders with regard to pay telephone calls. As the RBOC Coalition well knows, pay-phone service providers have collected an access charge for years. These charges have ultimately been reflected in the charges levied on number holders.”
Call blocking provides an “all or nothing” approach, because there is no mechanism that allows one pay phone to charge five cents per 800/888 call and others to charge 35 cents per 800/888 call. However, the dispatchers cited the pay-phone industry’s own acknowledgement that call-blocking would reduce its revenues; “California Pay Telephones complained to the commission on Dec. 30, 1997, about calls from its pay telephones being blocked by MCI,” the dispatchers wrote. “CPT states that over 50 percent of its calls are for 800/888 traffic.
Other than CPT’s understandable outrage over MCI making money even when the call is blocked, CPT provides a sterling example of what will become the universal norm with a change in the rules, that is that pay telephone customers will not have access to 800/888 numbers regardless of whether they were willing to pay for the call.”
The dispatchers stand behind their “modified caller pays” plan-the subscriber chooses either to drop coins in the pay phone or not-because “PSPs will receive whatever compensation they desire, IXCs will pass on their costs, number holders may choose to accept what otherwise may be called a collect call, and the caller will have the access necessary to ensure the widespread availability of pay telephone calls.”
Metrocall Inc. complained that IXCs already have plans to pass through pay-phone charges to paging operators at 30 cents per call, even if calls are blocked. It also pointed out, citing a letter it received from MCI, that the long-distance provider was under no obligation to give that 30 cents per call to the pay-phone provider. If that is true, Metrocall asked, then why should paging operators be assessed the fee in the first place?
The FCC should have talked to the local exchange carriers, which own most of the working pay phones, before it allowed the pay-phone industry to raise its rates to the new current level, said Arch Communications Group Inc. Arch pointed out that a study conducted by SBC found the cost of maintaining a SBC pay phone per month “is $93.11, less than 40 percent of the cost figure submitted by the American Public Communications Council (on whose figures the FCC based its rates.)”
Paging Network Inc. also asked the FCC to change its rate structure according to the length of the call, rather than on a flat rate, and that IXCs should be given a transition period to make changes in their compensation systems.
