Summary of Taxes, Surcharges, Recovery and Funding Charges on your GCI Invoice

GCI is responsible for collecting various taxes, fees and surcharges that appear on your monthly billing statement. Here is a summary of these charges:

FEDERAL UNIVERSAL SERVICE COST RECOVERY CHARGE

Goes to: Subsidize local service in rural high cost telephone exchanges. Specifically subsidy for local switching cost and local loop (phone wire) cost. Additionally, this funds the "Link-up America" program (subsidizes installation costs of phone service for qualified low-income families), and the federal "Lifeline Assistance" program (subsidizes the federal Subscriber Line Charges for qualified low-income families). These subsidies are intended to reduce local service rates for end users.

Applies to: Business and Residential Customers

Jurisdiction: Federal

Rate: 10.2% of the customer's total net interstate and international long distance charges (after the application of any discounts and credits) and the Local Subscriber Line Charge. Effective July 1, 2005.

POC - Payphone Origination Charge

Goes to: In 1996 payphones became deregulated. After this ruling, the FCC established a way for payphone providers to be compensated for calls from their payphones that do not generate coin revenue.

Applies to: Business & Residential Customers making calls from a payphone via a GCI Calling Card

Jurisdiction: Federal

Rate: A fee of $0.284 per payphone call was established to compensate payphone providers. On May 25, 1998, GCI instituted a payphone origination surcharge of $0.30 to offset this fee, plus $0.016 to cover the administration costs of payphone clearinghouse services.

AUSF - ALASKA UNIVERSAL SERVICE FUND SURCHARGE

Goes to: State program created to

• Subsidize the state "Lifeline Program" (to help qualified low income customers get basic local service
• Subsidize switching costs to provide small LEC's with financial assistance to reduce local service rates.

Applies to: Business and Residential Customers (Local and Intrastate services)

Jurisdiction: State (Local and Intrastate)

Rate:

• 1.2% of Local service charges
• 1.2% of Intrastate service charges
• Effective January 1, 2006

RCC - REGULATORY COST CHARGE

Goes to: The Regulatory Commission of Alaska to cover the commission's budget. Each phone company pays the same percentage rate, which is set by the RCA (formally known as APUC - Alaska Public Utilities Commission), per Alaska Statutes AS 42.05.253-3 AS 42.06.285 and the RCA regulations 3 AAC 47.010 - 3 AAC 47.999. This is not an optional charge and consumers are not exempt. All phone companies pay the same percentage rate.

Applies to: Residential and Business (Local and Intrastate services including recurring plan fees, surcharges on calling card calls, any Intrastate plan set up fees and all plan minimum deficiencies)

Jurisdiction: State (Local and Intrastate)

Rate:

• 1.641% of billing for Local Phone Service charges.
• 1.615% of billing for Intrastate Service charges.
• Effective July 1, 2005.

E-911 ("Enhanced 911") EMERGENCY SYSTEM SURCHARGE

Goes to: Support the provision of an enhanced system for emergency services communications, as prescribed by Alaska Statute 29.35.130, Section 29.35.130. In the statute, phone companies may charge up to $0.50 per month, per access line (no charge after 100 access lines in the account), in a municipality with 100,000+ people where an enhanced 911 system is in place. No more than 1.0% of the proceeds are kept by the phone company to cover administrative costs, and the rest is forwarded to the municipality to fund the system.

Applies to: Residential and Business Customers (Local services)

Jurisdiction: State (Local)

Rate:

• Anchorage $0.50 per access line per month
• Fairbanks $0.75 per access line per month
• Juneau $0.75 per access line per month

FCC EUCL - End User Common Line Charge
(formerly known as SLC - Service Line Charge)

Goes to: This charge was established by the FCC to recover a portion of the loop costs that is not covered through basic local rates.

Applies to: Residential and Business (Local services)

Effective Sept. 1, 2004, the FCC changed the number of Subscriber Line Charges (SLC) that a business can be charged for a Digital Subscriber Service (DSS). The maximum of 5 SLCs can be assessed. With the reduction of the SLC charges, a port surcharge was allowed:

• DSS customers - $23.51 Line Port Charge per month
• BRI $2.23  Line Port Charge per month
• PRI $23.51 Line Port Charge per month

Jurisdiction: Federal

Rate:

• Residential, per line or trunk: $6.50 per month
• Single-line Business, per line or trunk: $6.50 per month
• Multi-line Business, per line, trunk or VN: $9.20 per month Anchorage
• Multi-line Business, per line, trunk or VN: $9.20 per month Fairbanks
• Multi-line Business, per line, trunk or VN: $9.20 per month Juneau
• Multi-line Business, per line, trunk or VN:$8.56 per month Ft. Wainwright and Eielson AFB
• Effective July 1, 2005.

UAS - UNIVERSAL ACCESS SURCHARGE

Goes to: Fund Telecommunications Relay Service (TRS) for the hearing and speech impaired, as prescribed by Alaska Statute AS 42.05.296 and the Regulatory Commission of Alaska's regulations 3 AAC 51.100, et seq., requiring that TRS is funded by a monthly surcharge on all local service providers and IXC carriers.

Applies to: Residential and Business Customers (Local and Intrastate services)

Jurisdiction: State (Local and Intrastate)

Rate:

• Residential, per line or trunk: $0.10 per month
• Single-line Business, per line or trunk: $0.10 per month
• Multi-line Business, per line or trunk: $0.20 per month

NAF - Network Access Fee

Goes to: The Regulatory Commission of Alaska has made changes to the intrastate inerexchange access charge regulations. One of those changes was to institute a Network Access Fee (NAF) as a mandated way of paying for local network services. Beginning April 1, 2005 the NAF will be applied to each access line.

Applies to: Residential and Business Customers (Local services)

Jurisdiction: State (Local)

Rate:

• Residential, per line or trunk: $1.50 per month
• Single and Multi-line Business, per line or trunk: $1.50 per month
• PRI and T1/DS1, max of 5 charges per PRI or DSS: $1.50 per month Max of 5 = $7.50
• Federal, State and Local Taxes:

Federal Tax

Goes to: GCI is required to collect Federal Excise Tax on all telecommunications services provided to customers

Applies to: Residential and Business (Applies to all services except for Internet)

Jurisdiction: Federal

Rate: 3.0%

State Tax

Goes to: While there is no state tax in Alaska, GCI is required by the State of Washington to collect state Sales, Location and Business & Occupation taxes on private line and frame relay data services that terminate in the State of Washington and are billed to an address outside of Alaska.

Applies to: This tax is only for those customers with dedicated data facilities and does not apply to Residential customers.

Jurisdiction: Washington State

Rate:

• Currently Washington State Sales tax is 0.065%
•  Location Tax for the Seattle area (varies by community) is 0.017% and the Business & Occupation tax is 0.00471%.

Local Sales Taxes

Goes to: GCI is required to collect local taxes on behalf or organized cities and boroughs within the State of Alaska.

Applies to: Residential or Business customers.

Code: Varies depending on location

Jurisdiction: State (Local and Intrastate)

Rate: Varies depending on location and some locations have city and borough taxes combined

If you have further questions or would like more information about the purpose of specific regulatory fees or surcharges can contact the following organizations:

Intrastate

• Regulatory Commission of Alaska (RCA)
• Consumer Protection Division
• 263-2134

Interstate

• Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
• Public Service Division
• 1-888-225-5322
• psd@fcc.gov