Industry Leader in Telecom Data Analytics and Revenue Assurance

Time after time, carriers contact us about wanting to do something to lower their skyrocketing USF Fees.

Some carriers may feel like they are at the mercy of an endless cycle of a volatile contribution factor that has risen drastically in the past decade -from 15.5 percent in the first quarter of 2011 to 31.8 percent in 2021.

A solution that carriers overlook is their ability to reduce their Federal USF tax by means of a Traffic Study.

By using the Safe Harbor Rate, you can be spending twice as much as you should on USF Fees when filing your 499s. With the deadline for carriers to submit their 499As around the corner, the time to complete a Traffic Study is now.

Here's a direct quote from a recent USAC Webinar;

The best (easiest) time to switch from using the Safe Harbor percentage to traffic studies is with the 1st quarter filing of the year ... Keeping methodology consistent for all quarters simplifies annual revenue reporting on the applicable Form 499-A due the following April.

These spikes in USF fees can be managed by ditching the Safe Harbor rate when you file your 499s, and instead performing a traffic study.

Earlier this month, the NTCA- otherwise known as the Rural Broadband Commission, filed a petition for waiver requesting the Wireline Competition Bureau (Bureau) to extend the aid provided by the previous December 2020 Waiver Order. The Rural Broadband Commission explained in the petition that broadband providers continue to face challenges such as supply chain issues as a direct result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The main requests of the NCTA were as follows;

• The Commission should continue to allow A-CAM/RBE/Alaska Plan carriers to only pre-test 70% of the USAC-selected sampled locations for the first two quarters of 2022
• Extend the “simple” waiver request for A-CAM/RBE/Alaska Plan carriers
• Extend the pre-testing period for A-CAM/RBE/Alaska Plan carriers

"A person doesn’t know how much they have to be thankful for - until they have to pay taxes on it."

Whether you’re a large ILEC, or a small rural voice provider, with every 499 submitted to the FCC carriers and their customers contribute a percentage of their international or interstate calls to the USF. While the USF has proven it’s importance with the introduction of rural broadband support and other funding grants, there’s an ongoing dilemma in regards to how carriers contribute to the USF.

Much of this dilemma stems from the FCC’s Contribution Factor and Safe Harbor Rate that many providers default to using to file their 499s.

Complying with the USAC’s requirements can be stressful. However, being non-compliant during the pre-testing phase isn’t the end of the world. In fact - it’s part of the process in most providers' deployment journeys. 

As we jump into the fourth quarter of ACAM-I pretesting and prepare for the upcoming 2022 official testing, it’s important that providers determine what tactics they used to be successful this past year.

Phone calls have no boundaries, borders, or language barriers. However, billing for them does. 

If your company received a lawful request for specific Call Detail Record from three years ago to help with a current criminal investigation, would you be able to fulfill the request?

In our regulatory work, we’ve worked with carriers who get many subpoena requests, and we’ve had carriers that can’t remember the last time they got one. We’ve found that smaller providers don’t receive too many warrants or requests, but larger ISPs are routinely asked for this information. 

It's no question that the Universal Service Fund (USF) has proven it's value in creating an all-inclusive broadband network. However, the rising costs of USF fees have caused many industry professionals to call for a change in how service providers contribute to the fund. 

In our regulatory work, we're often shocked at how many providers don’t know that there are ways to cut their overall USF contribution to be a fraction of what it is now. 

To give a brief overview of the USF, it’s split between four separate funds;

• Low-income Lifeline fund
• Rural Healthcare fund (RHC)
• E-Rate: For Schools and Libraries
• High-cost fund
  

The ongoing adoption of a full IP network and changing regulatory environment demands that telecom service providers examine their network infrastructure to determine how they can change operations to increase efficiency and profitability. Many communications service providers are constrained by legacy tandem networks that are difficult and expensive to maintain. This has caused telcos to consolidate their older tandem switches to extend other’s life cycles or upgrading to more modern tandems. In each case, the process of moving network lines from one switch to another has been coined with the term rehoming. 

With the first quarter of performance testing behind us, we’d like to reflect on how our stamper technology performed. As we rolled out hundreds of stamper box devices across the United States, our years of experience in telecom were put to the test to adapt to new challenges that performance measures testing created. 

Underground utilities have become a vital aspect of local infrastructure across the United States. Even though they are critical to our everyday lives, little is being done to protect them.

If you’ve ever worked on any projects at home that required digging, I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase call-before-you-dig. Contacting your local utility companies to mark out pipelines before you dig can be the difference between rupturing an underground gas line and not. People often underestimate how important it is to know where these buried utilities are, even when doing smaller tasks like installing a mailbox. According to the Common Ground Alliance (CGA) 2019 Damage Information Reporting Tool (DIRT) Report, it’s estimated that there were 532,000 excavation-related damages to underground utilities in 2019, which is a 4.5 percent increase from the 509,000 damages that occurred in 2018.