Funding rural telephone network upgrades poses a real challenge Before divestiture we little guys gave Ma Bell all our toll revenue. She, in turn, doled it back to cover our toll expenses. That pool disbursed per Schedule A, B, or C. After Ma died, the keys to the pool were given to NECA. There is no question that every company has different investments for toll. And there are exchanges where a pool formula is not compensatory. Consider costs of hauling toll way to hell-and-gone, where solid citizens punch cows or bail hay. (That's where hamburger comes from). We've always had pools. They just get renamed. The current argument is made by those who insist access charges for high-cost areas should be born by those who happen to live there. Or, will IP pound the final nail in a century of policy that kept long distance costs uniform as to distance? Technology and competition have enabled the retail providers of telecom to eliminate distance as a billable item. The only price sensitive element left is duration. Cell marketers go crazy with this reality. As an aside, competitive fear of flat rate distance, and exclusion of others from proprietary and exclusive networks (roamers - competition pays a higher price) was a commonly expressed fear to the FCC, by objectors to the merger of AT&T Wireless by Cingular. Back on the farm- we (mostly Western) wireline providers are facing clamor that rate averaging makes it unprofitable to pay specific access fees to keep rural toll networks viable. Well - golly gee! Rural serves a tiny fraction of the population - but lines are spread over really big area. Rural costs are company specific but do average. Is COBAK - or bill and keep - nothing more than a way for wireless to avoid paying access? Thus achieve a competitive edge by not paying fees LEC's do? Or am I confused, as the multitude claimed, like the waves crashing on the shore. Or, as Kevin says, is access reform like (Mormon) Crickets rising up every summer and devastating all before them - to then die - and rise again next year. THE JAIL OF REGULATION Before divestiture, the revenue to pay for each telephone in the network was $21. Local service paid seven, with the remaining coming equally from State and interstate toll. Continued regulation to "keep local service price down" is a factor why legacy BOC's stock is still in the toilet. A Price Cap formula to guarantee basic local, and permit competition by (wireless and CLEC's) was agreed to by the BOC's and FCC. The BOCs could over earn by selling things like caller I.D., DSL and (Intralata) toll. But there is no incentive to plow money into rural upgrading. Nevada Bell, owned by SBC, is a prime example. In rural areas they don't. Nevada regulators fiddle, allowing the BOC to bank some profits in a fund supposed to fix rural problems. It works OK for last century telecom. Qwest, the poor child of the former seven, bit the bullet and sold off their "gawd-awful expensive-to-maintain" rural properties. Buyers are not chained to the BOC income lid called Price Cap. With cooperation of the effected 14 State Regulatory agencies, those former Qwest areas now operate on a rate-of-return business model that encourages upgrades. NATIONWIDE EAS With nationwide EAS (coming with VoIP), and no tax (on all chips) to fund the pools, maybe Congress could mandate broadband for all, and that cost nationwide with distance subsidy would come from a dime per hamburger. And it's the big city folk that benefit from all that hamburger that comes from rural high cost areas. THE BURGER SUBSIDY That should do it. I mean, a sizeable portion of high-cost areas are high-cost areas are because ranchers grow beef cattle, and farmers grow the hay that beef cows eat. These remote areas with say, one customer per 10 square miles ain't NYC with one sub per square foot. A dime per burger ought to do it. Super sized?   © Beehive Telephone Co.