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r 11.C.2. CONSIDERATION OF CHANGING LONG DISTANCE SERVICES PROVIDER - EVALUATION OF CALLING CARD USAGE AUTHORIZED The Board reviewed a Memorandum of July 15, 2002: Date: July 15, 2002 To: Honorable Board of County Commissioners Through: James E. Chandler County Administrator Through: Thomas W. Frame, Director (46.2> ( re - Department of General Services From. Department of General Services Terry L. Smith, Telecommunications Manager Subject: Long Distance Services for Indian River County BACKGROUND: The world is still feeling the effects of the 1982 Modified Final Judgement by US District Judge Harold Green which resulted in AT&T divesting itself of its 22 Bell Operating Companies. One of the "choices" telephone users had to make as a result of the breakup of the Bell System was choosing who was going to be their carrier of long distance calls In 1986, Indian River County chose AT&T to be the long distance carrier for inter -LATA (Local Access and Transport Area) calls not handled by SUNCOM. Then, as today most of the County's long distance traffic is carried by SUNCOM; for those County telephone lines which do not have SUNCOM access and for overflow situations, the intra -LATA calls (east coast of Florida from Sebastian through Key West) are carried by BellSouth and the inter -LATA calls are carried by AT&T. Since 1986, long distance rates have fallen, but charges such as "Universal Connectivity Charge" and "Carrier Line Charge" help to use up any savings realized through lowered usage rates. In 1998, AT&T decided to do their own long distance billing for business customers thereby avoiding the charges they had to pay the local operating company (BellSouth) to handle their customer billing. This separate billing came with a catch, however, in the form of a minimum monthly billing charge of $5 00. Soon this minimum charge went to $9.95 and then $9.95 plus any usage if the billing was less than the $9.95 minimum. The most ridiculous example of the unfairness of this billing practice was a case where the total of long distance usage, fees and taxes for one of our remote small billing entities was about $8.00; since we did not make the $9.95 minimum, the billing due AT&T was the $3.00 plus the $9.95 minimum. We quickly contacted AT&T to help us combine our billing in a fashion that would negate the minima.., billing charges Since our billing was fragmented and our call volume was really very low we no longer qualified for a dedicated representative at AT&T and were forced to work through their customer care network. Approximately a half-dozen representatives attempted to identify our fragmented accounts, but would leave the company or get transferred before a combining of accounts could be accomplished. August 13, 2002 47