* Fees: Cox’s voice-over-cable service vs. MCI’s voice service
Last week, Larry’s boss was complaining about the extra $2 fee he was charged by airlines to get a hard copy of his receipt. This prompted the inevitable office chatter about frivolous and costly fees across many industries – not the least of which are the fees charged by telephony service providers.
So Larry pulled out a recent MCI Neighborhood bill (for September in California) and his Cox Communications telephone bill (for October in Virginia). Both services offered a flat rate for unlimited local and domestic calls, voice mail, and custom calling features like Caller ID and three-way calling. For the packaged MCI service, the service bundle was $49.99. For Cox, the same features cost $14.99.
We attribute $30 of the price difference to the UNE-P charges MCI has to pay SBC for the local loop; Cox also has the advantage of sharing Larry’s service costs with his Internet and cable TV service, so the remaining $5 price difference can be attributed the bundled cost structure.
As for the additional fees, that’s where the fun begins when it comes time to understand and pay the bill. The MCI taxes and surcharges list included fees for 911; a Teleconnect Fund; two High Cost Funds; a Lifeline surcharge; federal excise tax; federal, state, and local surcharges; network access surcharges; a relay service and communications device fund; a federal universal service fee; and a local number portability fee. Total taxes and surcharges from MCI totaled $15.04.
The Cox Communications fees included charges for federal excise tax, a local utility user tax, E911 tax, a relay fund charge, a public right-of-way fee, an FCC access charge, and a federal universal service fee. The total Cox added charges were $10.15.
Next time, we’ll take a look at Vonage fees, and report on what the FCC chairman has to say about Internet telephony taxes and regulations.
