The Pay Telephone Reclassification and Compensation Provisions of The Telecommunications Act of 1996, RBOC/GTE/SNET Payphone Coalition Petition for Clarification

In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC or Commission) modified the Commission's rules regarding per-call compensation for payphone calls to better ensure that payphone service providers (PSPs) are fairly compensated for all completed, coinless calls made from payphones. The Commission revised its rules to address the difficulty that PSPs face in obtaining compensation for coinless calls placed from payphones that involve a switch-based telecommunications reseller in the call path. Given the difficulty of determining which entity is responsible for compensating the PSP for such calls (i.e., the switch-based reseller or the interexchange carrier that routes calls to the switch-based reseller), the Commission modified its rules to require the first underlying facilities-based interexchange carrier (IXC) to whom the local exchange carrier (LEC) directly delivers such calls to compensate the PSP for the completed coinless calls.