Industry Leader in Telecom Data Analytics and Revenue Assurance

Sometime last quarter, a controller at a mid-size VoIP provider finished his Form 499 and wondered why the universal service line on every invoice kept inching upward. He had followed the rulebook: apply the FCC’s safe-harbor ratio of 64.9% to VoIP revenue and 37.1% to wireless sales, multiply those totals by the quarterly contribution factor, and remit the money. What he didn’t realize until a traffic study told the real story is that his network sends barely one-third of its traffic across state lines. The other two-thirds never should have been taxed at the interstate rate.

AI: Bridging the Gap for Telecom's Legacy Systems

The telecommunications industry is undergoing a massive transformation, with Artificial Intelligence (AI) leading the charge. For many telecom companies, however, the path to modernization is paved with legacy systems—infrastructure often built decades ago that struggles to keep pace with today's demands.

On May 29, 2025, the Denver metro area experienced a critical outage.  Both 911 and non-emergency lines went dark for hours, leaving residents and authorities in limbo and prompting Douglas County Sheriff Darren Weekly to demand answers. While official investigations are underway, a deeper question looms: how would a modernized, resilient 911 infrastructure perform under similar stress?

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced a significant hike in the Universal Service Fund (USF) fee factor, which will rise to 34.4% for the third quarter of 2024. This marks a notable increase from previous quarters, reflecting ongoing efforts to sustain and expand the reach of essential telecommunications services across the United States.

Did you know that the costs of complying with federal, state and local subpoenas can be passed along to the requesting authorities?

The big providers of telephone, cable, and data services process hundreds of law enforcement requests for data every month. If you are a smaller provider, you may not get that many requests but when you do it’s a major disruption to your operation. We have had several requests from smaller clients to support them in their efforts to comply with subpoena requests so we thought we would summarize how the CALEA process works.

ATS is proud to announce that Andrew Fleming has been appointed Senior Adviser for the Utility industry. Andy is very well known in the industry and his professional experience spans nearly 50 years. Andy started his career as a Sales Engineer for the Sundstrand Corporation. He went on to become the District Sales Manager for Dresser Industries in the Northeastern US Region. In his most recent positions he represented Dresser Pipeline Solutions, Meters and Instruments.

Among Mr. Fleming’s professional affiliations are the American Gas Association, the Society of Gas Operators and the Northeast Gas Association. Mr. Fleming holds a BS in Industrial Distribution from Clarkson University.

Take a listen to our latest podcast where Peter Mueller and Ryan Guthrie discuss the FCC order and many of the questions we've been hearing from carriers who have to comply by July 31, 2019.  

The July 1, 2019 deadline to begin CAF performance testing is just around the corner. The summer might feel like it will never be here (especially if you live in the Northeast), but it will be here before you know it. And with it, the requirement to have your testing program up and running according to the standards laid out in the FCC Order. While there have been many petitions for clarification on the order, there has been no indication by the FCC that they plan to delay the order beyond the original July 1, 2019 deadline.

A few months ago the FCC released order DA 18-710 specifying the network performance testing and reporting required for ISPs who receive support from the Connect America Fund (CAF). The order is nearly 40 pages, but in this post we will summarize the requirements and provide some options for how ISPs can comply.

Who Must Comply?

Recipients of CAF high-cost universal service support, including:

Burstable billing, also known as 95th percentile billing, can present a variety of challenges if it's not regularly tested and monitored to ensure accuracy and completeness. While this type of billing arrangement is a nice benefit for customers and is often used as a marketing incentive, it can very easily lead to substantial revenue loss if any of the systems or procedures used to collect, mediate, and ultimately bill the customer are not functioning properly.

We recently posted 'Part 1' of this video series where our CTO Peter Mueller discussed how ATS' stamper box solution and data analytics help ISPs ensure accurate and complete billing for enterprise customers with burstable circuits.  In this video, Peter discusses how we help carriers quantify the common issues we uncover as well as their root cause and ultimately put controls in place to monitor and alarm when specific error conditions occur.