see what the Family guy has to say about it :)

http://www.ifilm.com/WMPPlaylist?bandwidth=200&ifilmId=2683695&refsite=7...

were SIP only and with our DID provider, they take care of paying ALL local, city, state and government screw you because we can taxes..

As a result we offer our customers a flat monthly fee for service + out of LATA LD and toll free usage..

George

well i thought we were in the same boat but i was wrong. ALL voip providers have to pay into the USF unless both ends of the call are voip (ie skype). If, at any time, that call ends up on the PSTN, USF fees have to be paid. In fact vonage is sip only (they are the biggest level3 customer of sip only service) but they were court ordered to pay USF. They appealed in every single federal district and lost.

I did learn that if your USF accessment is less than $10k you dont have to pay, but you DO have to file quarterly 499 files with the FCC claiming 'de minimis' status.

Erik Smith
CTO
BluegrassNet Voice
dCAP

Eric,

Are you a CLEC..? we talked about it and decided we didn't want to do the route of becoming a CLEC, for a couple reason, one of which was the management of tax's in all the city, counties and states.. I'm sure its a billing nightmare for a small company.

George

the FCC said all voip providers (not CLEC) must file quarterly. The penalties for non-compliance are devastating. If you are selling dialtone, and the caller places a call to another person and any portion of that call touches the PSTN in any way; you have to pay into the USF. Its not a tax, its a scam setup by the ILECs and ratified by congress to get your customers to have to pay the ILEC so they can give free phone service to welfare and foodstamp people (and schools).

Erik Smith
CTO
BluegrassNet Voice
dCAP

I'll do some more checking into it and let you now what I find out..

I did notice on several of our DS3 the USF tax's went up thie last month, I need to get more on top of this BS tax.. don't get me started on whats a tax and what's a tax they call a fund..

a duck by any other name is still a duck..

George

yea it went from 6% to 11% this quarter. Meanwhile bellsouth has fliers on every low income apartment complex advertising free/reduced phone service if you are on wellfare or get food stamps. The more people they give free service too, the more OUR customers have to pay bellsouth via this fund. Bellsouth isnt giving anything away, they are getting their $45 per person from the government. Fortunately my 11% of my 64% of total revenue is less than $10k annually, so i just have file and claim I am below 10k. But I do have to file. It totally sucks.

Erik Smith
CTO
BluegrassNet Voice
dCAP

yep just another reason to stay on welfare and food stamps.. here we (not me) provide the homeless bums with free voice mail and an 800 number so they can stay in touch with the other bums, guess who gets to pay for that in the end.. oh yeah BTW its not a tax, its a fund.. blaa...

George

Oh well, the good part is that you don't have to collect & pay all the state PUC fees like you would if you were a CLEC. Sometimes you are also exempt from city fees as well because this is all FCC regulated. Seriously, CLECs have found themselves left out of the VoIP arena, because their CLEC fees make their VoIP pricing non-competitive.

i wish that were true with NuVox. they are selling dynamic T-1's here

T-1 Loop
23 channel PRI
IP bandwith
80 DIDs
G729

so that even with all 23 PRI channels in use its still > 768k in IP bandwidth... all for the low low price of $450/mo.

there is no way a non-CLEC can compete with that... my T1 loops are $200 and the wholesale on 768k and 23 channels of a PRI are going to exceed $250. Not to mention the cost of an adtran total access 900 series device over a 36mo contract is yet more expense.

Erik Smith
CTO
BluegrassNet Voice
dCAP

Yeah, that's hard to compete with on a PRI basis, and its always hard to compete when PRI services are offered. I push the service aspect on those. Generally I stay away from them. But there's hardly any CLECs out there deploying IP phone systems with queues and IVRs, so there's the sweet spot.

And, if 'NuVox' was in anywhere in between Louisiana - Arizona, that $450 would be before about $150 of BS PUC / municipal fees they don't tell you about until you get the bill.

Anyone have any reference to this online? I need to do some research on this matter
Dont want to get stuck with a year of back taxes because we forgot to file something.

http://www.fcc.gov/fees/factsheets/owe-itsp.pdf

start there but the fcc website is where you want to read through.

Erik Smith
CTO
BluegrassNet Voice
dCAP

thank you for the info
i will start doing my homework