rural

The Federal Communications Commission is looking into a scam involving the attempt by local phone carriers in rural areas to collect more access fees from the major long-distance providers by increasing the number of calls from “adult” chat lines. Rural carriers have long received fees (up to 5 cents per minute) from long-distance carriers for every call they connect. The original intent behind this, of course, was to ensure that rural citizens have (subsidized) phone access. So when you make a call from New York City to your grandparents in North Dakota, Verizon pays an access fee to your grandparents’ local carrier for the connection. And the smaller you grandparents’ local carrier is, the higher the per-minute fee it gets Read More ›