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The following are discussed below: click on the topics that interest you.
The PIC fee is the amount charged to your account by our local carrier (LEC) when you change carriers. There is a fee for switching your long distance to another carrier and a separate fee for switching your local toll service to the same carrier as your long distance service or to a totally different company. Most long distance carriers will credit your account for this fee. If you switch your local toll and long distance at the same time to the same carrier, the fee is generally less than if you switch them at different times.
When you start up new telephone service, the PIC fee is generally waived for a couple of weeks up to as much as two months, so that you do not have to select a long distance carrier when you open your account with your LEC.
Our billing company will reimburse this expense, if you mail a copy of the bill to PROTEL at 26275 Riverview Drive, Wilder, Idaho 83676-5711 or fax it to us at 1-888-442-1477.
A long distance carrier does not have to directly wire your home; it uses the existing line provided by your local carrier (LEC). In the past, the long distance carrier had to add a fee to your bill which in turn was paid to the LEC for the use of their lines from your telephone to the POP (Point Of Presence, where the lines of the long distance carrier intersected those of the local carrier). Now, for non-business accounts, the local carrier adds the fee to your bill directly; it can be any amount within reason with the maximum determined by the FCC and varies from LEC to LEC.
The PIC-C (pronounced "Pixie") fee is however added to the working telephone numbers (WTNs) of each business account. The first line (or ANI) of each account is the Billing Telephone Number (BTN); every additional ANI on that account is a WTN. That fee is $4.31. That fee is charged even if the business did not make one long distance call within the billing period. [Every other tax on your bill, when you use PROTEL, is a percentage of your actual calls. If you make no calls, you do not have a bill. Indeed if your bill is less than a dollar, no bill is even sent, until it adds up to dollar.]
By opening a separate account for each ANI, every ANI becomes a BTN. The business has no WTNs.
Not all businesses need to have a business account. If you operate a home business using residential service, you can have 15 ANIs and not be charged a PIC-C fee. If you have a store-front or are listed in the yellow pages, you must open business account.
The industry standard for years was to bill all residential customers in one minute increments, which means that regardless of the length of the call in seconds, the call will be rounded to the next full minute. Most (all?) local carriers and cellular companies still bill that way. Look at phone bill. If the duration of each call is in whole integers, as opposed to values like 7.3 minutes, then your calls are being rounded up to the next full minute. You are paying for time that you do not actually use!
The following table gives you some idea of the savings provided by six second billing.
| If the average call length is ... | Percent savings with 6 second billing | Notes |
| 1.0 minute | 26.1% | |
| 2.0 minutes | 17.9% | |
| 3.0 minutes | 12.0% | |
| 4.0 minutes | 9.0% | Business average call length |
| 5.0 minutes | 7.2% | National average call length |
| 6.0 minutes | 7.3% | |
| 7.0 minutes | 6.3% | |
| 8.0 minutes | 5.6% | Residential average call length |
| 9.0 minutes | 5.0% |
I don't believe any discount phone service still uses whole minute billing, but the major carriers (AT&T®, MCI®, Sprint® and Qwest®) as far as I know still do. Protel bills in six second increments with an 18 second minimum call duration for local, long distance and calling card calls, once the number answers. International calls have a 30 second minimum call duration, with six second billing.
Each long distance carrier has one or more PIC codes. Regardless of which long distance service you are signed up with (if any), you can dial 10 + 10 + the three digit PIC for that particular service before you dial the actual number. For example, the PIC code for AT&T is 10-10-288. You will be charged whatever that particular carrier chooses to charge. Many of these numbers are advertised on television and during the commercial the fine print disclosure statement appears briefly at the bottom of the screen usually impossible to read. A few dial-around numbers may be genuinely cost effective. Unfortunately, too many of them are genuine rip-offs, with hidden fees and long minimum call duration (20 minutes for 99¢ - every completed call is 99¢, even if you talk for one minute), or worse, charging from the time you connect to the service, before the party even answers the phone. If you are going to try a 10-10 number, make one short call, and find out what it really costs you on your next bill before you decide to call Aunt Minnie and chat for an hour and find out your bill is over $100.
PowerDial offers an economical way to dial long distance without changing long distance carriers with a 5.4¢ per minute interstate rate, 6 second billing and no additional fixed monthly fees.
You see a lot of advertising
lately about fixed-fee unlimited long distance. Call anywhere you want
(does it include international calls or only domestic?) for a fixed fee of
so much a month. Is this a good deal? It is if you make a lot of long
distance calls and talk for a long time.
In California, where SBC is offering unlimited long distance for $20,
you could make 512 (over 8½ hours) of in-state calls for the same $20
(at our 3.9¢ California rate). Or you could make 370 minutes (over 6
hours) of interstate calls for the same $20 at our PNG rate of 5.4¢/minute.
Will you spend that much time on the telephone making long distance calls
each and every month? If not, stay away from bulk pricing offers and pay
only for what you actually use.
PowerNet Global now offers Power 3000,
with 3000 domestic long distance minutes (50 hours) monthly for $29.95 a
month.
As with 10-10 numbers, be sure to read the fine print when purchasing one. Are there connection fees? Is billing in whole minute or greater increments (probably)? Are incompleted calls charged against the card? Is there an expiration date? Is the date realistic? Is there a monthly "maintenance" fee charged against the card? Often times, the only way you get the 1.5 to 5¢ per minute rate advertised on the front of the card is if you make one phone call which lasts for the time allotted by the card. Is the voice quality equal to that of a conventional phone call; sometimes the low price connection is inferior. Of course if you misplace the card, you've paid for a lot of minutes you never used.
On the other hand, pre-paid cards can be a great cost savings, if you select a good card. We offer some prepaid cards that are inexpensive. Click here to see if any of the cards we offer can provide the kind of service you are seeking. You can often get a card for international calls to a specific country at a substantial saving.
With the exception of the PIC-C fee charged working telephone numbers, all the taxes added to your telephone bill as a PROTEL customer are percentages of the charges for the actual telephone calls you made. Since our rates are so low, your taxes will be correspondingly less.
When a business offers you a great deal, and then changes the offer for some perfectly logical (to them) reason, you sank your teeth into the bait and got hooked. Recently, SBC in our area has been offering some really great deals on long distance service. Yep, the rates are better than ours. But did you read the fine print when you signed up? The rates advertised expire one year from the date of sign-up and revert to seven cents a minute (with full minute billing!) after that. They don't have to tell you when that happens, because they "revealed" when you signed up for their service. Sometime this month, June, 2004, most of you will see a mysterious increase in your phone bill. The special deals ended September 30, 2003. But fear not, we'll still be here, offering the same low rates. We'll be glad to sign you up and we will not raise our rates unless absolutely necessary. We never have in the 12 years we have been offering long distance service.
Our competitors have some interesting ways of
getting more money out of their customers. I ran into a fee appearing on
AT&T bills called the "Regulatory Assessment Fee."
Sounds impressive doesn't it? A
click leads
you to this explanation:
"Beginning on July 1, 2003, your bill will include a 99
cent per month Regulatory Assessment Fee. This fee will help AT&T
recover the costs associated with interstate access charges, property
taxes, and the expenses associated with regulatory proceedings and
compliance. This fee applies for each month in which you have any AT&T
charges on your bill. This fee is not a tax or charge required by
the government." The emphasis is ours. How come we
don't have to charge that fee? Our motivation is service. We really enjoy
saving money for people!
You may receive a check in the mail for $15 to $75. Its yours, all you have to do is sign the reverse. Of course by so doing, you also switch your long distance carrier. The money is good, but once you have made calls with that carrier that cost the amount of the check, you will be paying a premium rate for service equal to ours. Check the fine print.
The unauthorized and illegal change of your
telephone carrier without your specific authorization. Slamming by a
carrier may result in substantial fines imposed upon them by the FCC. If
you have been slammed, please report the incident to the FCC using the
link available here: http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/complaints.html
In an effort to prevent slamming, the FCC has decreed that telephone
carriers must maintain a Letter of Agency (LOA) for every customer on file
and/or have a third party voice verification of every application. For
more information, click here.
To prevent slamming you can lock in your dial+1 and local long distance service. To prevent the switching of your PIC, you can ask your local carrier to freeze your long distance providers (for both dial + 1 and local long distance services!). Your long distance provider then cannot be changed without your specific permission. There is no charge for this service. You will be asked when you sign up for service with PROTEL if you have a PIC-freeze on your phone. If you do have, once we have entered the information into our computers, we will contact you and ask you to call your local phone company (LEC) to ask them to switch your service. Do not call your local phone company until we call you; if you have any questions after signing up, please call PROTEL.
By telling your friends how much money you have saved on your long distance and how pleased your are with the service, you can reduce the long distance rate of your residential phone and receive credits on your bill for the calls your friends made. Click here for details.
In many states, the state is divided into LATAs or Service Areas. To see a map of the U.S. with the LATA boundaries shown, click here. When you sign up for telephone service with your local carrier (LEC), you have a circle around your home of about 14 to 16 miles within which you may make unlimited local calls which are covered by your monthly fee. Beyond that circle of free calls (but within the LATA), the calls you make are local toll calls. Those within the LATA can be carried by your LEC or by a long distance carrier of your choice and if you are not in an area with overlays, can be dialed without dialing a "1" first, but they may require you to dial the area code. Those calls you make to phones outside the LATA (inter-LATA calls) are dial+1 long distance, requiring you to dial both the "1" and an area code. These calls can be handled by the long distance carrier of your choice.
RBOC stands for the Regional Bell Operating System. Each residence or business lies within a geographic area served by a single RBOC. That is the company that provides your local white page directory, maintains the wires which connect your telephone to the rest of the world and provides your dial tone. Until recently, these areas were inviolate, but when these local companies wanted to provide long distance service, the FCC said they could not do so until they allowed other companies to use their wire networks to provide local service. So you may now select an alternate local provider if your RBOC wants to provide long distance service. At present this includes companies like Bell South, SBC and Verizon. If you have another RBOC, you probably cannot select an alternate local provider and even if you do have one of these RBOCs, you may not be able to obtain local service trhough an alternate provider. Rural areas are especially expensive to operate and maintain and the profit margin is much less, so the alternate provider is reluctant to offer service to those areas.
Each applicant for service must provide identifying information: a social security number or driver's license number and date of birth. All new accounts are subject to credit approval. If you find this objectionable, you can still obtain service by using automatic billing with your credit card. The only way we can offer such low rates is to not sign up people who run up huge bills and then fail to pay them. Such behavior causes the costs for honest people to increase. We will let the other providers offer service to the deadbeats. Our clients are the best!
Our current interstate long distance rate is as low as 5¢/minute, if you elect to have local service with Ernest Communications. We pride ourselves on prompt, courteous, personalized service. Our loyal customers have said many nice things about our service. We can serve your residential or business telecommunication needs swiftly and efficiently and your monthly bill will please you. Our in-state rates are equally attractive, as low as 3.9¢/minute, available to everyone who has a record of paying their utility bills on time and is offered with no monthly fees or minimums. Call us today at 1-800-4 PROTEL (1-800-477-6835) and start saving.
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Contact
us at 1-800-4-PROTEL (800-477-6835) or by e-mail at
info@protel-com.com
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Page created August 28, 2003. Revised June 21, 2004
Copyright © 2003 - 2004 Eugene Volz All Rights Reserved