Notice of Rate Change

Many customers throughout the country are using “free” teleconferencing services and other “free” calling services. These services include international, calling card, pre-recorded playback calls, and chat lines that often contain adult material that are offered by various telecom providers. These providers unscrupulously route the calls to terminate in high cost rural areas, most recently in Iowa, North Dakota, and Minnesota. The only “free” portion of these services is the use of a provider’s conferencing equipment, chat line computers, or other routers. As the customer, you still pay for the outbound long distance minutes associated with the “free” conference call at your standard Access One long distance rates. Access One and the other network providers are billed at the higher rates for these minutes that terminate in the high cost rural areas. These conferencing service providers offer these “free” services to generate increased minutes that terminate in high cost rural areas, without informing the end users (including Access One customers) that the cost of terminating these calls is high. This illegal practice is referred to as traffic pumping. There are pending disciplinary hearings at the FCC and the state PUCs to punish these offending service providers.

As a result of these traffic pumping schemes, effective March 1, 2010, long distance calls terminating to many high cost rural areas will incur a per minute rate of $0.35.

This rate change is necessary to offset the high cost rural termination rates that are imposed on Access One and other network providers.  Please inform the necessary personnel at your businesses to avoid these “free” services (especially to the designated areas mentioned above) and the resulting increased costs described in this notice.

Access One offers state of the art Conference Calling products at very competitive rates, and we encourage you to use these services as an inexpensive solution for your Conference Calling needs.  For more information regarding Access One’s Conference Calling products please contact us at 800.804.8333.

BRIAN K. BARKLEY, CEO
ACCESS ONE, INC.