Establishment of a Joint Board

On February 3, 1997, the Commission adopted a Report and Order (``Order'') adopting a recommended decision by the Federal-State Joint Board regarding permanent rules to govern the procedures that incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) use for allocating Other Billing and Collecting (OB&C) expenses between the intrastate and interstate jurisdictions. Specifically, the Joint Board recommended that OB&C expenses be divided equally among three services: Interstate toll; intrastate toll; and local exchange, with two thirds of the OB&C expenses thus allocated to the state jurisdiction, and one third allocated to the interstate jurisdiction. In cases in which an ILEC provides no interstate billing and collecting for an interexchange carrier (IXC), the Joint Board recommended an automatic reduction of the interstate assignment to five percent to cover the cost of billing the federal Subscriber Line Charge (SLC). The intended effect is to adopt the Joint Board's recommendations and implement new rules regarding the separations procedures applicable to OB&C expenses.