Understanding Your Bill

You may find the following items on your phone bills

  1. Local Service: The cost of unlimited calling in your local calling area without any optional services.

  2. Custom Calling Features: The total cost for your selected custom calling features (such as Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, Call Forward Busy, Call Forward No Answer, Speed Calling, and Three-Way Calling.)

  3. Class Service: the total charge for selected Customer Local Area Signaling Services, such as Caller ID, Caller ID Block, Selective Call Forwarding, Repeat Dialing, Voice Mail, Call Return, Selective Call Rejection, Anonymous Call Rejection, Customer Originated Trace, and Selective Ringing.

  4. Dual Party Relay Chg.: This state charge helps to pay for the relay center that transmits and translates calls for hearing-impaired and speech-impaired people.

  5. Subscriber Line Charge: The FCC-authorized monthly recurring charge is designed to recover a portion of a local phone company's expenses associated with providing long distance carriers with access to the local phone network.

  6. E911: This fee is charged by local governments to help fund emergency services such as fire and rescue.

  7. Toll: These are charges for calls made outside of your local calling area, but within a region known as your "extended calling area".

  8. Federal Universal Service Charge: The Universal Service Fund helps make phone service affordable and available to everyone, including schools, libraries, consumers with low incomes, rural health care providers, and those living in areas where the costs of providing telephone service is high.

  9. InterLATA Carrier: LATA (Local Access and Transport Area) is a geographic region that represents a customer’s local calling area. In general, any call outside your LATA is considered long distance and is referred to as an interlata call. Customers can choose their interlata carrier.

  10. IntraLATA Carrier: Calls inside your LATA are referred to as intralata calls and may or may not be toll free, depending on conditions set by your local phone company. When there is a toll charge for an intralata call, it is often referred to as local long distance, regional long distance or simply as local toll calls.