Miami-Based Telecom Firm Adds Surcharge for DSL Customers of Other Providers
Posted on: Wednesday, 24 September 2003, 06:00 CDT
Sep. 25--Supra Telecom customers started receiving an unsettling letter earlier this week, telling them the Miami-based company will add a $20 surcharge next month to customers who get their high-speed Internet access from another provider.
In the letter, Supra said BellSouth is charging it a premium rate for customers who have their local phone service through Supra and use another provider for high-speed access, or DSL.
As a rival phone provider, Supra must lease access through BellSouth in order to provide the local phone service to its customers.
In a telephone interview, Russ Lambert, Supra's chief operating officer, said the company been battling with BellSouth in court and before the Florida Public Service Commission over these charges for several years.
Last year, the PSC ordered BellSouth to bill access for the Supra customers with DSL accounts at the lower wholesale rate. But BellSouth hasn't yet complied with that order.
Supra has found that some of the 10,400 customers for which it's being billed at the higher rate don't have DSL with any provider right now. But Lambert said the letter only went to about 2,500 Supra customers so far.
Supra customers, like Perry Johannesburg of Miami, are irate about the surcharge.
Johannesburg uses America Online for his DSL service and doesn't want to give it up.
"I wish I could just have what I enjoyed for the last 4 years -- cheap phone service through Supra and my fast connection with DSL. I don't want to pay the surcharge because of a fight between BellSouth and Supra."
Lambert said these higher charges have cost Supra -- which is undergoing bankruptcy reorganization -- more than $6 million in the past two years.
"This was a tough decision for us. We had been putting it off for years," he said.
The PSC said Wednesday it had received eight customer contacts regarding the fee Supra plans to impose. Four actual consumer complaints have been filed.
Other rival phone companies have had this same billing dispute with BellSouth and taken the problem before the PSC. In November, the PSC is expected to rule on a similar case brought by the Florida Competitive Carriers Association. Supra expects that if the PSC rules in favor of the FCCA, the decision will apply to Supra as well and it can stop collecting the $20 surcharge.
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