AT&T Has to Pay Up!

It seems as if AT&T has finally lost the battle in trying not to pay the USF charges. For sometime now they have been claiming that these cards are "information services" since they contained advertising and thus were not subject to the USF charge. Well today the FCC dug in its heels and announced that AT&T had to pay up! I am sure new owner SBC is loving this great inheritance... Surely they new this was coming. Don't worry they will find a way to make us everyday customers pay for it with a "we are stupid" type of tax on local and long distance services.

In other news related to this judgment, all carriers claiming they are exempt from the USF since they carry calls over a VOIP network, now have to pay the fee as well. No more hiding behind the VOIP thing, especially if their network only has limited usage of VOIP. There is still some grey areas as it relates to 100% pure VOIP carriers. This should be interesting for the lawyers from the big VOIP companies like Net2Phone, Vonage and Ibasis.