Verizon Makes a Switch on DSL Bills

One mysterious charge is taking the place of another on the bills of Verizon Communications Inc.’s high-speed Internet customers.

Verizon told its digital subscriber line, or DSL, customers in e-mails over the weekend that the Federal Communications Commission had allowed it to eliminate Universal Service Fund fees of $1.25 to $1.83 a month. The fees had been used to help defray the cost of phone service in rural and poor areas.

In its place, Verizon will add a “supplier surcharge,” starting Saturday. That fee -- a few cents lower than the USF charges -- will go right to Verizon.

“How convenient” to eliminate one fee and add another, said customer Evemarie King of Adelanto, near Victorville. “What they’re really saying is that since the government’s not going to charge you, we will.”

Regina Costa, a telecom analyst at the Utility Reform Network in San Francisco, called the switch “highway robbery.”

Verizon spokesman Eric W. Rabe said the company had been absorbing costs for providing DSL to customers who don’t take phone service. The new fee, spread among all customers, is aimed at making up those costs.

Stand-alone service costs $5 more a month. At AT&T; Inc., stand-alone DSL costs $15 more a month. AT&T; said it had no plan to add fees.

“Nobody likes a price increase, and we don’t want to have one,” Rabe said. “But sometimes it’s necessary.”