Federal Subscriber Line Charge

Internet access discussion, including Fusion, IP Broadband, and Gigabit Fiber!
44 posts Page 1 of 5
by sometown » Mon Sep 19, 2016 12:04 pm
Pretty upset that my bill is 155% of the advertised price. Phone + Internet for $40 is a complete fabrication. The phone-related taxes and fees come to $12.68 per month. Glaringly, a $6.50 charge called "Federal Subscriber Line Charge" is part of that. Sounds like an official government charge doesn't it? It's not. That is pure profit for Sonic. This is what they're charging us to be connected to their phone service. The only thing federal about this charge, is that the FCC has said that $6.50 is the most a phone company can charge you to be connected to their lines. It's not a tax, it's a part of Sonic's bill for their service. Sticking it in the section that includes the state and local taxes is downright dirty.

Forcing everyone to have a landline whether they want it or not just seemed silly when I ordered. But charging me $152 a year in taxes and hidden fees is just insulting. If it were just the legitimate taxes, that would be one thing, but over half of it ($78 a year) is just a hidden charge from Sonic.

I really wanted to like Sonic, but this is no way to treat customers.

Info on "Federal Subscriber Line Charge":

https://consumerist.com/2007/06/26/what ... i-buck-it/

https://www.fcc.gov/general/faqs-telephone

https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/un ... phone-bill
by dane » Mon Sep 19, 2016 12:44 pm
The issue here is really the bundling, which to date we have made an integral part of our products. The entire philosophy of "Fusion" is that it's a "Fusion" of voice, data - and our goal was, TV. The goal was to deliver all three products under one simple offering, for as low a price as possible. (Also, FaxLine, a free domain name and hosting, email, long distance, even international calling to over sixty countries!)

But things have shifted, with TV becoming available over the top as a separate subscription (Sling TV, HBO Now, etc). As a result, prior to completion of our TV efforts, we pivoted away from integrated TV, launching instead an add-on partnership with DISH, which allows us to solve the need for subscription TV, without diving fully into that product.

Of course there is also the shift away from landlines: as of last year, about 50% of households did not have a landline at all, opting instead for mobile. And consumers don't value long distance as much as they used to, despite our inclusion of free calling to so many countries.

This makes our "Fusion" product awkward, with it's bundling of phone service. While most of our members use the phone service daily, and value it, many do not, and are asking for unbundling - and that request is accelerating, following the trend across the industry.

We are working toward other ways of packaging and offering "Fusion", and I expect we will launch an Internet + DISH bundle, and an Internet-only option in the future. (Maybe it's just "Sonic", rather than "Fusion") These require elimination of a lot of service integration that we have created in the product, the provisioning and software tools in service today, so it's not a simple switch we can flip. But it is a priority for us, and we know it's costing us sales every day, many consumers do just want internet, or just internet and TV.
Dane Jasper
Sonic
by sometown » Mon Sep 19, 2016 1:06 pm
That's all well and good, and I hope you offer a service free of these charges ASAP, but how do you justify hiding the $6.50 monthly fee you're charging me to be connected to your phone lines? If you feel this is a legitimate charge for providing Voice service, why is it buried with taxes and given such a misleading title. Federal Subscriber Line Charge is clearly intended to sound like a fee the Federal Government charges.

On my bill it states that the Fusion charge of $40 breaks down to $30-Data + $10-Voice. But, after all is said and done, I'm paying $22.68 a month for a non-existent landline. Your $40 per month ads are everywhere. I've subscribed to the most basic service but my bill is $61.97! Router rental aside, that's a ridiculous amount of additional fees to surprise your customers with..
by dane » Mon Sep 19, 2016 1:36 pm
sometown wrote:That's all well and good, and I hope you offer a service free of these charges ASAP, but how do you justify hiding the $6.50 monthly fee you're charging me to be connected to your phone lines? If you feel this is a legitimate charge for providing Voice service, why is it buried with taxes and given such a misleading title. Federal Subscriber Line Charge is clearly intended to sound like a fee the Federal Government charges.

On my bill it states that the Fusion charge of $40 breaks down to $30-Data + $10-Voice. But, after all is said and done, I'm paying $22.68 a month for a non-existent landline. Your $40 per month ads are everywhere. I've subscribed to the most basic service but my bill is $61.97! Router rental aside, that's a ridiculous amount of additional fees to surprise your customers with..
While it may be small solace, Sonic is far, far more transparent about taxes and fees than any other carrier in the industry. (That says more about the industry than it does us, but it's something.) With our competitors, they simply say in their website that there are taxes and fees, they do not quantify them or even explain what the categories or costs are. If you phone and ask, the reps simply will not provide you an estimate - you only find out once you get a bill.

Sonic instead provides a full list of all of the taxes and fees which apply to our voice service, with a per-city current-month estimate for every city we serve. (The rates change, roughly every 3 months, based upon mostly changes to the federal rate. Sometimes cites also make local changes, and there are state changes periodically.) That detail is linked from our sales pages, but you can also find it directly, here: https://www.sonic.com/taxesfees (Or just google "Sonic taxes and fees")

See in particular item 17, which has per-city estimates. (And if someone could convince San Francisco to eliminate their flat-rate "access line fee", that would be awesome! It makes SF the most-taxed jurisdiction we serve.)

At the end of the day, if you don't need voice, a standalone "not-Fusion" product is the solution, and I don't have that ready to offer yet. But we are working toward that, as well as bundles with just internet and TV, which seems to be the most common bundle interest.
Dane Jasper
Sonic
by sometown » Mon Sep 19, 2016 2:25 pm
I still haven't received a response directly related to the title of my post or my follow-up question. What is the additional $6.50 fee listed as Federal Subscriber Line Charge paying for? It's more than all of the other taxes and fees combined ($6.18), and is in addition to the $10 of my Fusion bill already designated to pay you for phone service and infrastructure.
by Guest » Mon Sep 19, 2016 3:24 pm
sometown wrote:I still haven't received a response directly related to the title of my post or my follow-up question. What is the additional $6.50 fee listed as Federal Subscriber Line Charge paying for? It's more than all of the other taxes and fees combined ($6.18), and is in addition to the $10 of my Fusion bill already designated to pay you for phone service and infrastructure.
Were you looking for something other than what the FCC already answers in their FAQ?
by sometown » Mon Sep 19, 2016 4:05 pm
The FCC site is not expansive on this, and it leaves me confused. Some providers don't charge the fee at all, so why is Sonic charging it, and why are they charging the maximum amount allowed under federal law? If it is a fee to allow me to be connected to their phone lines, then what is the $10 for Voice we're paying for as part of the Fusion $40 bundle? It's like paying for your lunch and then being billed an additional 65% for the right to access it. It's shady, shady business.

I spoke with a Sonic Rep, a Sonic Manager and now we've got the CEO on this thread, but no one has given any justification for this fee. They haven't acknowledged it, they won't explain how it's different from the base charge for having a phone line, and why they are clearly trying to disguise it as a Federal Fee. Compare it to another line item on the bill: Voice San Francisco Access Line Fee. That's a legit fee charged to the phone company by the city of San Francisco. They recoup it from us and It is $3.17. Next to that, the Voice Federal Subscriber Line Charge Fee for $6.50 sounds like another legit fee from the government, doesn't it. They're intentionally misleading us, but they won't admit it.

I ask again, if this is a fee for being connected to their phone lines, what's the $10 for Voice paying for? Being connected to the phone line is the only service I'm being provided and it sure seems like I'm being double-billed for the privilege.
by Guest » Mon Sep 19, 2016 4:28 pm
Sonic doesn't own the wires so isn't this fee charged by AT&T and (like with taxes) Sonic is just the middleman?
by sometown » Mon Sep 19, 2016 4:56 pm
No, they are not acting as the middleman here. They are receiving 100% of this fee. This is an additional charge for access to their network. And that's my beef. If this fee is for access to their network, that sounds like the very thing I'm already paying for as part of my monthly rate for the Fusion Data/Voice bundle. Access to the network is the product they're selling to begin with. Forget that I don't even want phone service from them. They are burying it in the section that lists the additional taxes and fees from federal, state and local governments, and they've added the word Federal to it to make it seem like it's a middleman type thing.
by Guest » Mon Sep 19, 2016 5:30 pm
sometown wrote:No, they are not acting as the middleman here. They are receiving 100% of this fee. This is an additional charge for access to their network. And that's my beef. If this fee is for access to their network, that sounds like the very thing I'm already paying for as part of my monthly rate for the Fusion Data/Voice bundle. Access to the network is the product they're selling to begin with. Forget that I don't even want phone service from them. They are burying it in the section that lists the additional taxes and fees from federal, state and local governments, and they've added the word Federal to it to make it seem like it's a middleman type thing.
There is some very good discussion here. Are you on Fusion Fiber, Fusion + POTS, or Fusion FTTN? I looked at my parents' and my bill--they have Fusion FIber, and I have Fusion FTTN. Their Fiber bill has this FSLC charge while my FTTN does not. I wonder if it is related to how phone is delivered. DSLreports has a thread that talked about it in 2013 and one of the final posts said that CLECs, which is what Sonic is categorized as, is free to not charge it. I would also be interested in what Sonic says is the motivation of this fee.
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