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Vonage Starts Charging 'Regulatory Recovery Fee'
slavitos writes "Vonage
sent an email announcing that starting with
'your next billing cycle, Vonage will begin to charge a Regulatory Recovery Fee of $1.50 per phone number. This is a fee that Vonage charges its customers to recover required costs of Federal and State Universal Service Funds as well as other related fees and surcharges. State and Federal agencies collect these fees from communications providers to fund public projects such as rural and library communications programs.' That could mean that Vonage is losing at least some ground in its battle against government VOIP regulations."
You need to pay for things. Phone service isn't GNU/PhoneService --- IT'S NOT FREE.
Vonage is different from IM and voice chat because it interconnects with the PSTN and thus Vonage counts as a phone company.
the unlimited Long Distance plan dropped today from $40 / month to $35 / month, the local plan dropped a buck from $26 to $25. Now I know why
I haven't gotten any emails yet, but I'm not surprised. I'm still waiting for them to get their act together in terms of getting my existing phone number transferred (The fax I sent them magically appeared when I threatened to end my patronage).
They seem to be so severely understaffed it makes my head spin. I have twice now sat on hold for over a half hour - at which point I am allowed to leave a message instead of speak to a real human being.
They clearly know their limitations, though, when I called to complain about how long it was taking to get my service up and running, they credited me a month before I could even launch into my bitch. All I could say was "habidah, whosiwhah, zibit.. I'm buying you a pizza!"
Finally, if their site stands up to the slashdot effect I'll be shocked to the core, as it's slow to begin with. I wonder if their VOIP has to make heavy use of their servers or if its more direct. If Slashdot can interrupt my phone service, I'll be ticked!
>> ...why is it that a company can pass the charges on to the end user...
Because the company can set its own prices. Taxes are a cost of doing business. If they go up, the company needs to recoup that cost one way or the other.
If you don't like it, stop paying for it,
Sheesh.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
A lot of companys are doing this nowadays, at&t wireless is now chargeing a 1.50 "regulatory programs fee" to help cover the cost of complying with a lot of new FCC rulings/regulations (one of the largest of these being Line number Portability (LNP)) The nice thing about making it a seperate charge like that is its easy to see on a bill so its easy to pass off PR wise, "Oh its the fcc's fault" And, at least in the case of attws, it has been promised that when the costs have been recouped the fee will be removed, it might seem a bit underhanded, but at least in the wireless industry competition has it to the point that profit margins are so slim, huge projects like that hurt. I wonder if any other companys are doing this?
Jesus saves, everyone else takes full damage from the fireball.
Actually, despite what cynicism might suggest, fees and taxes of this sort are generally required by law to be itemized.
.08 tax," because each of these seperates that tax from the retail price.
If your state has a sales tax, is it not rung up as a seperate item on your reciept?
In my state (NY) it is even illegal to sign items as, say, "$1.08 including tax."
"$1.00+tax" is legal, as is "$1.00+
KFG
Why don't they just raise prices instead of charging a separate fee.
At the same time they also lowered prices for some of their plans by as much as $5/month.
--- Gary McClellan
I am a Vonage Customer...
In short the $1.50 tax is added, but the prices of their residential plans have fallen $5 and $1 respectively. So in my case it's a $0.50 hike to keep the government off their back. If I used the full unlimited service my bill would go down.
Also, as a quick review... I love the service, it's saving me $20 each month over conventional phone service. Calls are clear, and I keep in touch with my family much more these days. The only downsides... There are very few downsides including no phone when the power goes out or Comcast has a service outage in Nashville. You have to pay a little attention to bandwidth issues, meaning don't use a P2P app while on the phone or it gets a little shaky. This is insignificant compared to free voice mail, a naturally unlisted number, and portability to anywhere you plug the Cisco box in... I could go on for days... But to clarify I attached the e-mail from today.
Note the full text of the e-mail:
I am pleased to announce changes in our two Residential rate plans, which take effect September 20, 2003.
Our Premium Unlimited Plan, which was $39.99, is now reduced to a monthly rate of $34.99. Our Unlimited Local Plan is reduced from $25.99 to $24.99. Your new lower rates will appear on your next bill automatically. There is nothing required on your part to take advantage of this cost reduction.
The new lower rates will take effect when your next billing cycle begins after September 20th, and will remain at those lower rates in subsequent billing periods. We urge you to consider upgrading any Local Unlimited lines to our popular Premium Unlimited Residential Plan with the new $5.00 discount. At $34.99 it has never been a better value.
In your next billing cycle, Vonage will begin to charge a Regulatory Recovery Fee of $1.50 per phone number. This is a fee that Vonage charges its customers to recover required costs of Federal and State Universal Service Funds as well as other related fees and surcharges. State and Federal agencies collect these fees from communications providers to fund public projects such as rural and library communications programs. Your total Regulatory Recovery Fee will reflect a $1.50 surcharge for every phone number in your account including primary voice lines, second lines, fax lines, Toll Free PlusSM numbers and Virtual Phone NumbersSM.
Discounts for additional lines will still be $5.00 per month. This means that when you add more Premium Unlimited lines to your Vonage account, the rate for these lines will be just $29.99 per month. Discounts for added Unlimited Local lines will be just $19.99 per month.
Our one goal at Vonage is nothing less than your total satisfaction. Over the last several months we've made large strides in developing new calling features for you. We've also dramatically increased our geographic presence throughout the United States. What I find most exciting is that this is just a preview of what's to come.
We are extremely gratified that our customers continue to be our biggest enthusiasts and our best source of new ideas as we continue to innovate and redefine global communications.
On behalf of all of us here at Vonage, thank you for your business.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey Citron
CEO
The sound quality is excellent. No lag or other artifacts. They have two bandwidth settings, 80 and 32K. I use the lower one because my DSL is only 128K on uploads. I would rate the low bandwith codec quality as better then a cell call but not quite as good as a Verizon one. When I lived in Tucson, I had 256K upstream bandwith and used the 80K setting. It was better than a wired phone! It's my understanding that they are soon implimenting a 60K setting that I'll likely change to.
Any more information about this? The Cisco ATA-186/188 is capable of doing G711, G729, and G723.
I'm presuming the "80K setting" is G711 (64Kb codec+16Kb IP/UDP/RTP overhead -- this number adds up). I'm presuming the "32K setting" is G729 (8Kb codec+16Kb IP/UDP/RTP overhead -- this number doesn't quite add up). G723 is 6.3Kb/5.3Kb, and probably is not being used with Vonage.
So, the question is, if they're going to support something in-between, what's it going to be with? I'm guessing it's not going to be using the ATA (at least, not with the current codebase; and I'm not aware of future plans to support other codecs, Cisco really doesn't support much else on their IP Telephony products). Do you know if Vonage is planning to do this on someone else's gear? Whose?
My Verizon Tax Bill before Vonage:
911 funding fee 0.50
Dual party relay 0.11
Interstate access charge 6.50
Federal excise tax 0.85
State telcom sales tax 1.6
Federal Universl Service Fee 0.60
Svc Provider Number Portablility Fee 0.36
Universal Connectivity Charge 2.66
Bill Statement Fee 1.50
Federal Tax 0.80
State and local tax 1.61
Regulatory assessment fee 0.99
TOTAL TAX 18.11
So I figured a guess at the total take from Verizon lines at 18.11 my tax * 12 months * 135,000,000 customers = 29,338,200,000 Rounding it off to the even Billion for 30 Billion dollars a year in Tax.