With traditional phone services, you’ll still be able to use any corded phone in your house, even if the electricity goes out. Cordless phones, on the other hand, require electricity to operate. So if you have one of these phones, you won’t be able to use it until the power is turned back on.
Certain types of telephone equipment or phone calls are currently incompatible with Caller ID technology e.g. automatic dialing systems, cell phones, etc.
In addition to serving our customers within our exchange, Bretton Woods Telephone Company provides infrastructure access to other communication carriers. These carriers are required to pay Bretton Woods Telephone Company when their traffic uses our network. The FCC has mandated reductions in the payments we receive from these companies. According to the FCC’s new rules (July 3, 2012) Bretton Woods Telephone Company is billing an Access Recovery Charge (ARC) as a way to recover a portion of the costs incurred by providing other carriers access to the network.
Your bill includes the 3% federal excise tax levied by the federal government that applies to all telecom services, not just local service. In addition, many state, local and/or municipal governments impose taxes on telecom services and, if applicable, these taxes are listed on your bill.
The Federal Universal Service Fund (USF) assists with the costs of providing “affordable” services to low-income individuals and to residents in rural, high-costs areas. In addition, this fund helps schools, libraries and rural health care providers obtain advanced services, such as Internet access. All providers of telecommunications services contribute to the support of these programs. The amount on your bill depends on the services you order and the number of telephone lines you have.
A flat monthly charge, established by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), assessed directly to customers to help local telephone companies recover some of their costs in construction and maintaining the local network. Current monthly charges are $6.50 for residential single-line, multi-line and business single-line; and $9.20 for business multi-line and hunt group.
