Whippany, NJ - September 9, 2004 - The National Exchange Carrier Association (NECA) will be holding its annual EXPO from October 4-7 at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. The highlight of the four day event will be a symposium on Monday, October 4—Tomorrow’s Technology, Yesterday’s Regulation—Making it Work.

Among NECA’s guests will be keynote speaker Richard Lerner, Associate Bureau Chief and Chief of Staff of the Wireline Competition Bureau of the FCC who will speak about Intercarrier Compensation and FCC regulatory developments. The symposium will include presentations from Jeffrey Citron, CEO of Vonage, Joel Lubin of AT&T, Bob Rowe of the Montana Public Service Commission, and Melissa Newman of Qwest.

There will also be a full schedule of training sessions and seminars for NECA member companies on a wide variety of emerging rural telecom issues including phantom traffic (telecommunications traffic that terminates at local exchange carrier switches lacking information needed for billing), intercarrier compensation, pricing in a packet world, challenges to Universal Service, and broadband technology. Further information about EXPO is available at http://www.neca.org/.