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July 28, 2009

CenturyTel Rate Validation Made Simple

If you are spending a lot of time trying to validate CenturyTel rates with their tariffs, something helpful to know is that CenturyTel is divided into states and companies. The company name will determine the correct tariff to use. For example, Alabama has two companies, CenturyTel of Southern Alabama and CenturyTel of Northern Alabama. You would think that these would be billing from the same tariff. However, Southern ties to CTOC FCC #2 and Northern ties to CTOC FCC #3. Another example is Michigan. There are 4 Companies in Michigan: Midwest Michigan, Michigan, Northern Michigan and Upper Michigan. CenturyTel of Midwest Michigan and CenturyTel of Michigan fall under CTOC FCC #1 and CenturyTel of Northern Michigan and CenturyTel of Upper Michigan fall under CTOC FCC #7. This cross-referenced information can be located on CenturyTel’s website on the following page: http://interapp.centurytel.com/resources/pdf/applications/tariffs/interstate/i-state-x-ref.pdf. Knowing that different companies fall under different tariffs can certainly save time when completing rate validations for CenturyTel.

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July 16, 2009

Trouble Verifying a Verizon Rate?

Have you ever been researching through a Verizon tariff trying to validate a rate for a circuit but were unable to find the USOC or appropriate rate quickly? Something that may help is to know that Verizon divides their interstate tariff by State level OCNs. Since this is uncommon for most tariffs, you may want to make a habit of checking the state level OCN for the circuit being researched. As an example, Verizon has multiple sections of their interstate tariff designated by OCNs. At first glance, a circuit is billing on a BAN thought to bill out of the Verizon South territory (FCC # 1), but the rates are not matching for the given USOC. By reviewing the invoice for the state level OCN it can be seen the circuit ties to a Verizon North OCN (FCC # 11). This can save you time trying to maneuver through the Verizon tariffs and may save an invalid dispute being submitted to the vendor.

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July 14, 2009

It's In Your Interest

All the major RBOC's and ILECS have provisions for interest credits. When a dispute is resolved in a customer's favor they will receive a credit the dispute amount and are supposed to receive what is usually referred to as a penalty factor. However if you don't file for the penalty you most likely won't get it. The penalty factor for the major RBOC's per day are:

Verizon North - 0.0005%
Verizon South - 0.00024657%
Bell South - 0.000329%
Ameritech - 0.000493%
SBC (AR/KS/OK/TX) -0.000657%
SBC (MO) - 0.00059%
Pac Bell - 0.000493%
Qwest - 0.000407%

When you look at Pac Bell and Ameritech percentages they come to 18% annually. In the case of large disputes if you don't file for the interest you may be losing out on a lot money. This language is usually found in the General Regulations section of the tariff.

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July 09, 2009

International Telecom Alliances Provide Seamless Connectivity Across Borders

One of growing trends in international telecommunications is the emergence of business alliances between telecommunication carriers in Asia and Europe. These alliances market to international travelers and they offer benefits that include: dialing with your usual short country and area codes, accessing voicemail, caller ID, browsing and e-mail all while roaming on other networks. This means instead of the usual roaming charges and reprogramming that usually happens with international travel - a customer from one carrier can now travel across borders and roam around the other country and the other carrier’s network without ever having an interruption in their mobile services. The two leading alliances right now are Bridge Alliance and Freemove.

Bridge Alliance (Asia and Australia)

The Bridge Alliance was formed in November of 2004 and it’s made up of eleven major mobile carriers in Asia and Australia. These include Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel), Bharti Airtel (India), Globe Telecom (Philippines), Advanced Info Services (Thailand), CSL (Hong Kong), Companhia de Telecomunicações de Macau S.A.R.L (Macao), Maxis (Malaysia), Optus (Australia), SK Telecom (South Korea), Taiwan Mobile (Taiwan), and Telkomsel (Indonesia).

The Bridge Alliance members from these 11 companies total over 160 million people – or more than half of the entire U.S. population.

Freemove Alliance (Europe)

Freemove is based in Europe and it is an alliance of Orange (France Telecom’s mobile subsidiary), TIM (Telecom Italia), T-Mobile (Deutsche Telekom’s mobile subsidiary) and TeliaSonera (the dominant mobile carrier in Sweden and Finland). The regional footprint of these carriers covers most of the countries of Western Europe as well countries in Africa (through Orange), the U.S. (through T-Mobile), and Brazil (through Telecom Italia).

Freemove promotes its services to multi-national corporations offering them “a simple roaming package for voice and data services including BlackBerry and FreeMove International Connect.”

As of March of 2007, these two alliances, Bridge and Freemove, signed a memorandum of understanding that paves the way for cross-alliance cooperation between the member carriers. The global footprint of this alliance-to-alliance agreement will cover 38 countries across 6 different continents and it will provide seamless international mobile coverage to over 400 million customers.

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