In addition, for companies that contribute to the Federal Universal Service Fund, the contribution factor will decrease from 11.1% to 10.2% in the third quarter of this year as recently announced by the FCC.

The filing reflects updated tariff and pool membership changes, as well as rate revisions to the End User Common Line Charges, Federal Universal Service charge factors and traffic sensitive rates. The new tariff is scheduled to become effective July 1, 2005 for the one-year period ending on June 30, 2006.

Tariff and pool membership continue to be strong. There will be a net gain of three companies in the traffic sensitive pool bringing the total to 1,120 study areas. There will be no participation changes in the common line pool. There will continue to be a total of 1,244 study areas.
 
“It is a positive indication that our pool and tariff membership continues to rise,” said NECA President Bill Hegmann. Clearly, our members value the ease of administration and revenue stability provided by the NECA tariffs and pooling.

“The presence of a third revenue stream, from access charges permits our members to adequately recover the costs of their investment to build and maintain the networks on which most telecommunications traffic rides.”