Groups Protest AT&T Rate Hikes for Middle-mile Access

The Federal Communications Commission must move quickly to set limits on the rates that large telecom carriers charge businesses and competitors for middle-mile access because AT&T is planning significant rate hikes in July, a group of competitors, consumer groups and business customers said.

AT&T is poised to raise rates on so-called special access lines, the middle-mile connections to telecom carriers' central switching facilities, when FCC-enforced conditions on AT&T's December 2006 acquisition of BellSouth expire after Wednesday, members of the NoChokePoints Coalition said. AT&T announced that it planned to raise special access rates once the merger conditions expired in notifications filed with the FCC in 2007. The rates paid by some large-business customers could rise by 7 percent to 8 percent, said Colleen Boothby, executive director of the Ad Hoc Telecommunications Users Committee, representing several large-business telecom customers.