An American Fleecing → Follow the money

The nicely written piece brings out and describes the issues with the fees, but provides no research or background where the Telco's might actually be paying out on the back side.

Everyone likes to complain about the charges, has anyone actually looked at SBC's or BellSouth financials and look for where the money goes? These are publicly held companies and they have to break out their financials just like all the other public companies.

Instead of whining about the collection, why doesn't someone actually go look at their revenue statements and payables and see if some of them are truly "pass-through" or just pure mark up. Caller ID unit cost is 1c per. Good start. What about the rest?

said by ricep5:

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Everyone likes to complain about the charges, has anyone actually looked at SBC's or BellSouth financials and look for where the money goes? These are publicly held companies and they have to break out their financials just like all the other public companies.

Instead of whining about the collection, why doesn't someone actually go look at their revenue statements and payables and see if some of them are truly "pass-through" or just pure mark up. Caller ID unit cost is 1c per. Good start. What about the rest?

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LOL! You aren't likely to find them. The Bells are masters of obscurity and obfuscation... just read one of their public tariffs -- something designed to make the process transparent.

Aside from the unscrupulousness of the bells though, I think the FCC must take most of the blame for letting this go on under the guise of a federal tax. Unfortunately, the misrepresentation is just subtle enough not to make regulators care enought to fight the Bells. After all, the Bells simply pay their multitude of lawyers with these fees.

do you really expect for 'Joe "DSL" Shmoe' to be able to figure out where his $0.57 go in those piles and piles of corporate paperwork?...even if he'll mange to have access to them

Instead of whining about the collection, why doesn't someone actually go look at their revenue statements and payables and see if some of them are truly "pass-through" or just pure mark up. Caller ID unit cost is 1c per. Good start. What about the rest?

why don't YOU do it? how do you know that caller id cost 1c? did you figure it out from reading their financial statements? or just repeating what everybody else says?

Why should we care about where the money goes in the backend?

If company A wants to charge $5 for caller id when it costs 1 cent to provide then Company B will sell it cheaper. This is especially true with everything being package deals now a days.

said by PhoenixDown:

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If company A wants to charge $5 for caller id when it costs 1 cent to provide then Company B will sell it cheaper. This is especially true with everything being package deals now a days.

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Ummm I see a *small* flaw in your argument.

Exactly how many local Telcos do you have to choose from?

Me, I have exactly one. SBC. Oh, I do have the choice of picking #1 (SBC) with various other resellers on top of it, adding extra charges.

But it's all still SBC. It's not like I can pick up the phone and say "I want my service thru Bellsouth" or "Change me to Qwest" or "I'd like to try Verizon".

Nope. It's all just 1. SBC.

Mxxcon sez; "why don't YOU do it?"

I have. I know where the USF mandate money goes. I don't like how its spent, but thats not a telco problem. Some of the other funds are collected to pay for their regulatory expenses with the FCC. Most of that goes to the lobbying effort. However some of those other "fees" are new to me or I haven't seen them in my market.

Mxxcon sez; "how do you know that caller id cost 1c"

I negotiated a telco contract years ago. It's a software module in the switch. The cost of the module from Lucent was negligible then, since the E911 mandate, it has to be a standard now. They are standard on cell phones, the most competitive and cost sensitive telco service going. No extra charge there!

Everyone puts alot of energy into standing on the podium about the fees, but rarely does anyone actually analyze where it goes. I would be interested in seeing how the fees are spent today. Is it really mark up? Or are they just passing on their unregulated costs?