its interesting that I have to charge my customers 15% of 64% yet when I look at other carrier bills like Nuvox (now Windstream) their $600/mo bill for various phone lines and phone packages; I only see a few dollars charged for USF. They are definitely cheating the system, perhaps through legal loopholes, perhaps not. Remember Adelphia? Just because the company is full of harvard business and harvard law graduates doesn't imply that they are using legal and extralegal loopholes. Sometimes they just cheat.
as far as the analogy that ATT is paying the 15%, thats not entirely accurate. Yes there might be a USF fee on my bill of $15, but I wouldnt go as far as to say if it were to go away that my ATT core charges would go up as a result. Its not coming out of their profits, they simply pass those costs on to the consumer. Ever see a Vonage bill? They lost a lawsuit to Verizon over a patent issued 20 yrs after the invention of DNS. Instead of that coming out of their profits, they charge the consumer an extra $5. However their website wont add this $5 to the price of their service when shopping around and comparing prices. I have seen first hand the way these carriers quote services. Its _amazing_ how a $400/mo PRI quote suddenly becomes $575 when you get your actual bill due to all the fees and taxes added. None of those were ever disclosed in a quote even thought they really could calculate a lot of this, at least to a rough estimate level. As long as Norlight or Paetec run around quoting $400 PRI, it will be unlikely that ATT raises their core pricing even at the demise of some of the taxes. There is still a race to present the smallest quoted price and then nickel and dime the shit out of people through hidden charges. I just dont see a big concern by them to eliminate the USF.
BTW those Federal Subscribe Line fee's go directly into their pockets and none of that is ever quoted in the price either.
http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedi...