Coalition Asks FCC to Lower Toll-Free Fees

A coalition of companies and organizations that rely on toll-free phone numbers has asked the Federal Communications Commission to reduce the fee that pay-phone operators can charge for connecting 800 and 888 calls.

Companies that operate pay phones charge long-distance companies 28.4 cents for each toll-free call they connect. The pay-phone operators say the charges are needed to reimburse them for the cost of operating the phones, which normally nets them 35 cents per call.

Although the cost would technically be charged to the long-distance phone companies that connect the calls, some groups fear that carriers will pass along the cost to consumers in the form of higher prices.

Trucking firms, paging companies, airlines and other industries that have come to rely on incoming 800 and 888 calls from pay phones filed a petition late Monday asking the FCC to reduce the fee to about a dime.

Meanwhile, the American Public Communications Council, a Fairfax, Va., trade group representing about 2,000 pay-phone companies, filed its own petition, asking for the per-call fee to be increased to 35.8 cents.

The rate reshuffling is part of a nationwide effort to dismantle the complex network of subsidies between various types of phone companies, as required by last year’s telecommunications reform. The 28.4-cent charge went into effect Oct. 9.

Pay-phone operators have long complained that they have been subsidizing those who use pay phones to make toll-free calls--and the companies and organizations that receive those calls.

“These calls represent more than 20% of the volume of calls from pay phones,” said Vince Sandusky, president of the APCC. “That’s like saying to trucking companies that 20% of the freight they haul will have to be hauled for free.”

But the American Trucking Assns., the Air Transport Assn., the International Communications Assn. and other groups told the FCC that the 28.4-cent fee is unreasonably high. The Consumer Federation of America and the American Automobile Assn. are also protesting the fee on behalf of callers. Even the National Network to End Domestic Violence in Washington, D.C., complained to the FCC that if its National Domestic Violence Hotline--and similar hotlines operated in 25 states--has to pay 28.4 cents for each incoming call from pay phones, shelters for abused women and children will suffer.

“When women are calling from a pay phone they’re probably in the most danger, and we wouldn’t want those women charged for those calls,” said Donna Edwards, the group’s executive director. “At the same time, our services are crisis services, and the budgets are already restricted. This could severely impact our ability to help everyone who calls us.”

After the FCC publishes the petitions, each side will have 15 days to file comments. Then the commission can take as long as it wants to decide how to resolve the matter.