Fattening the take
Jeff Shaw would like you to know about the Low Use Service Plan offered by a (no longer the, I suppose) telephone company. It’s a mere $9.63 a month.
Until the fees kick in:
- Federal Subscriber Line Charge — 5.31
- 911 Service Fee — .60
- Federal Universal Service Fee — .50
- Other Surcharges and Fees — .14
- OK Universal Service Fee — .22
- Municipal Charge — 1.34
Which comes to $8.11, before you add in the taxes (another $3.36).
That “Other Surcharges and Fees,” incidentally, apparently is not actually a slush fund:
$0.04 per exchange access line or arrangement is charged for the Public Utility Assessment Fee. The fee provides the level of funding established by the legislature for the Corporation Commission Public Utility Division for the regulation of Oklahoma public utilities.
$0.05 is a state-legislated fee administered by the Oklahoma Dept of Rehabilitation Services to provide equipment and maintenance to qualified individuals in accordance with the Telecommunications for Hearing Impaired Act.
$0.07 is used to pay for the Telecommunications Relay Service, a federally mandated service in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), administered by the Oklahoma Telephone Association (OTA). Your AT&T local telephone company and other telephone service providers collect and remit the monies to OTA. OTA pays Sprint, the vendor who operates the Telecommunications Relay Service.
Since this comes to sixteen cents, apparently both Jeff and I are getting a two-cent break for some reason.
My own total for such stuff is $6.93; the 911 fee here is 39 cents, and the “Municipal Charge” only 37 cents. The other charges are the same here at the other end of the Turner.
This does not reflect the cost of a long-distance carrier, which comes with a crapload of other fees plus, inevitably, more taxes.
Is it any wonder 26 percent of Oklahomans don’t have a land line at all?
