Good, Tough and Timely. Revising Intercarrier Compensation

Examining the political landscape, it's good that the Federal Communications Commission is focusing on the issue of Intercarrier compensation. It's also the focus via the topic of phantom traffic, a form of arbitrage based on the ambiguities in the rules about termination based on interconnection--not the call's origination. The existing system of Intercarrier compensation came about after the divestiture of AT&T, and it operated on assumptions about the cost of transport which were accurate for the time, but have lost relevance today. A call placed today, as Executive Director of the VON Coalition Jim Kohlenberger points out, costs as much to go across the office as it does to go around the world. State tariffs now have lower rates for services, thanks to competition between fiber and IP. Locally, however, the price may not reflect the market.