The FCC should abolish access charges immediately, George Washington University...
The FCC should abolish access charges immediately, George Washington University telecom professor Gerald Brock argued in a paper published by the Free State Foundation. He said wireless carriers have “prospered and pioneered important innovations such as distance insensitive rates” because…
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of their exemption from rates in the 1990s. He also said the current system “retards technological progress,” and creates “high transaction costs as companies seek ways to profit from access charge arbitrage.” The early access charges were designed as a subsidy, but “identifiable subsidies have already been removed from access charges and the previous subsidy revenue incorporated into USF payments,” Brock said. He’s also concerned that because “the same facilities can be used for regulated telephone service and unregulated services, the regulatory procedures used to compute access charges cause them to sometimes subsidize competitive services or provide windfall profits."