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| What is the Arizona Universal Service Fund (AUSF)? |
| The Arizona Universal Service Fund (AUSF) is available to qualifying telecommunications carriers to help fund the costs of providing service to customers. Article 12 of the Arizona Administrative Code contains the rules that the ACC uses to administer and implement the AUSF. |
| How can the AUSF help carriers and customers? |
| The AUSF can help provide carriers with the funds they need to serve high cost and rural areas. Customers in these areas can benefit if their carrier qualifies to receive AUSF funds. Those customers would likely experience lower rates than they would have had if their carrier could not receive AUSF. Also, there are some areas where the costs to extend lines to customers are so expensive that a carrier cannot serve customers in those areas. Following rule revisions, the AUSF may be able to be used to fund line extension costs. These customers would benefit by being able to have telecommunications service where before they could not have afforded the line extension costs and would have gone without service. |
| How would a company receive AUSF? |
| Companies interested in applying to receive AUSF would make a rate case filing with the ACC. Having companies file rate cases in order to receive AUSF is being reviewed in our rulemaking proceeding. |
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2008 Rates Approved by Decision No. 70104 |
| Category One providers: |
- $0.003808 per access line
- $0.038085 per interconnecting trunk line
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| (Category One companies provide basic local exchange service, wireless service, paging service and other commercial mobile radio services that interconnect with the public switched network.) |
| Category Two providers: |
- 0.1781 percent of intrastate toll revenues
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| (Category Two companies provide intrastate toll service) |
| The National Exchange Carriers Association ("NECA") administers the fund on behalf of the Arizona Corporation Commission including the annual revenue requirement and assessment rates, collections, and disbursements. If your company is required to begin collecting and remitting AUSF fees, please contact Donna Casey of NECA at 973-884-8531 to obtain the correct forms. |
