Fiscal Year 04/05 Planned Rate Changes

Original posting: 6/25/04

The following is an overview of the planned Communications Services Business Operations recharge rate changes for fiscal year 04/05. We plan to implement these changes on July 1, 2004.

Approximately one year ago, after announcing the planned recharge rates for fiscal year 03/04, which consisted of the reduction of some recurring and one-time charges for telephone services, Communications Services received several requests for future rate reductions for toll calls. During this past fiscal year, our staff negotiated a new toll call contract with our primary carrier (Qwest) that will enable us to implement the following rate reductions.

1. For the past two decades, toll call rates have been split into three time periods: daytime (8:00 am to 4:59 pm), evening (5:00 pm to 10:59 pm) and nighttime (11:00 pm to 7:59 am), with increasing discounts in the evening and nighttime periods. We are compressing the rates for calls within the USA into two time periods: daytime (8:00 am to 4:59 pm) and nighttime (5:00 pm to 7:59 am). Multiple rate periods for international calling will be eliminated. International call rates will be the same, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
2. In addition to Area Codes, states are divided into one or more geographic regions called LATAs (Local Access and Transport Areas). Calls that originate and terminate within a LATA are called intraLATA calls; they are also sometimes referred to as "local long-distance" calls. UCSB is in LATA number 740, which covers an area from Paso Robles to Carpinteria. A list of the cities and telephone number prefixes in the LATA are available on our website. We plan to reduce the rate for calls within the LATA from the current $0.103/minute (daytime), $0.082 (evening), and $0.072/minute (nighttime) to $0.05/minute any time of any day.
3. Charges for calls within California and to other states have had six different rates, depending on the time of day and distance to the called party. The highest rate, for daytime calls within California, has been $0.269/minute. We plan to reduce the rate for all calls within the USA, but outside of the LATA, to $0.15/minute (daytime) and $0.11/minute (nighttime). This rate change will reduce the charges to the campus for domestic calls by an average of sixteen percent (-16.0%). Some departments that have historically made a large number of calls, especially within California, may see reductions of up to thirty percent (-30%).
4. We plan to reduce the rates for calls to Canada by an average of forty-seven percent (-47%).
5. We plan to reduce the rates for calls to Mexico by an average of three percent (-3%).
6. We plan to reduce the rates for calls to other international locations by an average of twenty-four percent (-24%). Some international calling rates will be reduced considerably more than the average. For example, the rate for calls to the United Kingdom, which account for 25% of all international calling minutes, will be reduced by thirty-five percent (-35%).

The aggregate impact of the above changes should reduce long distance calling charges to the campus by approximately 12.4%.

In addition to the above long distance rate reductions, we plan to implement two recurring monthly rate changes.

1. We currently have two types of voice mail service: Standard, which lets you record a greeting of up to two minutes and keep up to 15 one-minute messages, at a monthly rate of $7.50/month, and Enhanced, which lets you record a greeting of up to four minutes and keep up to 30 four-minute messages, at a monthly rate of $9.50/month. We plan to convert all business voice mailboxes to Enhanced service, but with the current Standard service recharge rate of $7.50/month. You don't have to do anything to effect this change. We will make it for you.
2. Currently, all or nearly all of our Monthly Recurring Charges (MRCs) are set to charge pro-rata. If a recurring charge is applied for 3 days in a month of 30 days, the recharged amount would be 1/10 of the full monthly rate. This could be a problem with one of our future web applications, which will enable customers to place lines on and remove lines from Temporary Disconnection any time they wish, without submitting a work order to our staff. The Temporary Disconnection MRC will no longer be prorated after June 30, 2004. The full monthly amount will be applied for each month, and any portion of a month, in which the Temporary Disconnection MRC is applied. For example, if someone wanted to temporarily disconnect a line for two days, from June 30 through July 1, they would be charged for two months of temporary disconnection (at $1.68/month), not 2 days.

All other Business Operations recharge rates will remain the same in fiscal year 04/05 as they were in fiscal year 03/04. A list of all of our fiscal year 04/05 recharge rates is available on our website.

For comments or questions, send email to Vince Sefcik, Director of Communications Services.

VS