access charges

The issue of telephone access charges is "not a black and white area."

As you state in your question, Internet access charges are an important factor.

Once upon a time, the long-distance access charges made more sense.

The company needs the links to avoid high access charges.

Competition among providers is low, and access charges remain high.

These access charges represent nearly half the cost of making a long-distance call.

Long-distance carriers now pay local companies about $25 billion a year in access charges.

Internet providers now do not pay access charges to the local phone networks.

That does not include telephone access charges, which the guests will pay separately.

No further increases in access charges are contemplated, the commission said.

Callers have to bear local access charges from their service providers.

While the commission is expected to reduce access charges, it will probably not eliminate them altogether.

Sprint has said that it will pass along the savings from the access charges to customers.

Access charges account for about 40 percent of the cost of long-distance service.

Even the more modest cuts in access charges did not mollify some companies.

Many of those corporate contracts include provisions that pass access charges along to the client.

For every dollar collected in local access charges, long distance customers have received an extra $1.30 worth of service.

Opponents of access charges feared that these would force out low-income people, who make few long distance calls.

In this last case, corporations use the same data networks by private phone lines and would continue to be exempt from access charges.

These companies also benefit from lower access charges.

Access charges are also the biggest source of profit for local telephone companies, and the rates have come down very gradually over the last decade.

For starters, the commission ordered local phone companies to reduce their price ceilings on access charges by 2.8 percent.

But in filings with the commission, the Bells said they planned to reduce access charges by only $1.5 billion.

Who gets the proceeds from the access charges?

Some of the access charges cover the costs that rise as the length of individual calls rises.