Telecommunications Expense Management: How to Audit Your Bills, Reduce Expenses, and Negotiate Favorable Rates

304 Pages·1999·20.22 MB·\304

by  Michael Brosnan (Author), John Messina (Author)

Telecommunications
Expense Management
How to Audit Your Bills,
Reduce Expenses and
Negotiate Favorable Rates
by Michael Brosnan, John Messina & Ellen Block
CRC Press
C f * Taylor & Francis Group
Boca Raton London New York
CRC Press is an imprint of the
Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
CRC Press
Taylor & Francis Group
6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300
Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742
First issued in hardback 2017
Copyright © 1999 Michael Brosnan, John Messina and Ellen Block
CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business
No claim to original U.S. Government works
ISBN 13: 978-1-138-41232-3 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-57820-032-0 (pbk)
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Telecommunications Expense Management
Courses, Contact
Information &
Acknowledgements
Courses
The authors offer seminars and training courses
based on the information contained in this book.
Sample courses include:
• Telecommunications Bill Auditing Practices
• How to Reduce Your Telecommunications Expenses
• How to Read a Customer Service Record (CSR)
• Contract Negotiation
Contact Information
For more information about the above courses,
contact [email protected]
or [email protected].
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Jennifer McArthur for her assistance in
making this book a reality. We can’t thank her enough
for the diligence and hard work she put in to complete
this book. To Michael Messina, Paul Fogarty, Chuck
Fraser, Bob Norian, Donna Spoto, Anne Race, Grace
Rotondi and Randi Smaldone - thank you for sharing
your knowledge and expertise with us as we wrote this
book. And to Brian Leigh, thank you for the contribu­
tions you made to the entire book. We couldn’t have
done it without you.

Table of Contents
q- Introduction . i
<
* III Understanding Your Local Telephone Bill 1
The Customer Service Record (CSR)- 19
Switched and Dedicated Services
Carrier Access Billing System “CABS” 75
How to Identify Billing Errors 95
and Obtain Refunds
111
Optimizing Your Network 131
Long Distance Bill Auditing 137
6
7 Secrets of Contract Negotiation 183
8 Utilizing the Power of the Internet 201
to Audit Your Bills
9 | Processing and Validating 235
_
Technology Invoices
10
Call Accounting, Phone System Security, 245
Toll Fraud and Toll Abuse
Appendix A - USOC List 255
Appendix B - List of IXC PIC Codes 273
Appendix C - 10 Steps that Vendors can take to 277
Improve Customer Service and Billing Accuracy
Glossary 281

Introduction
Airfares, car prices and telephone bills are confusing by design.
Getting a good deal requires research and skillful negotiating.
Telecommunications expenses can be so multifaceted and complex,
even the most careful research and skilled negotiating can fall short of
achieving the goal of getting a “good deal”. Deals change, they’re not
static. Rates change, services are installed and removed, service
providers merge, it’s a very dynamic process fraught with risks that
make billing errors commonplace. That’s why we wrote this book.
Telecommunications Expense Management is a complete guide to
managing all your telecommunications billing. We cover a broad spec­
trum of products and services from the most basic, often called POTS
for plain old telephone service, to trunks, interexchange services, net­
work configurations and fraud protection. More importantly, we explain
how to save money on all of them.
Large or small, typical telephone bills are constructed using thou­
sands of codes called FIDs and USOCs; leftovers from legacy systems
now in transition. These legacy systems reside in mainframes and were
developed by the pre-divestiture Bell System or emulated by indepen­
dent telephone companies and long distance carriers. Once these billing
systems were standard but now they are convoluted.
Rather than trying to imagine how distorted telecommunications
billing has become, think about the likelihood that you are being over­
billed for services. Suppose you were overbilled for years for products
and/or services long since disconnected. And suppose you could recov­
er all that overbilling and implement methods to prevent mistakes from
happening again. Better yet, imagine going to your management or
Board of Directors with a five or six figure check representing the
refund you’ve arranged to obtain. We see this happen often. This book
.
Introduction 1
contains real life examples of refunds like this along with information on
how these billing errors were discovered, exposed and resolved.
There’s a chapter dedicated to optimizing your telecommunications
equipment and services that can show you how to save hundreds, if not
thousands, of dollars per month. It covers taking inventory of existing
telecom equipment and lines, showing you ways to reduce monthly local
and long distance billing.
This book is also an excellent reference guide, with information that
includes industry resources and shopping tips for communications ser­
vices. You’ll find listings on local and long distance service providers,
international carriers, fiber and cable companies, call centers and inter­
national callback.
You’ll learn how to use the Internet to find suitable service providers
and the best deals. Another chapter is devoted to using the Web to help
decipher your phone bill and get tariff filings, regulatory rulings and pric­
ing information. You’ll learn about industry publications, training class­
es, seminars, trade shows and conferences.
The telecommunications industry in the United States generates
over $200 billion annually. It is technology driven to a point where new
products and services define their market and consumer demand tends
to be reactive. An industry this big, this sophisticated, this dominating,
can overpower you. This book is a survival guide designed to help you
cut through the inertia and get to core value. Once there, plan on saving
lots of money for your company.
Background
In our first book, we explained the reorganization that followed the
1/1/84 Bell System divestiture. At that time, seven regional bell operating
companies (RBOCs) were formed to handle local and intraLATA tele­
phone traffic exclusively (we’ll explain LATAs in Chapter One).
InterLATA calling was consigned to interexchange carriers (IXCs) like
AT&T and MCI. Each discipline had its own mission and could not
encroach on the other’s territory.
Today, through mergers and acquisitions, the seven RBOCs are now
four. IXCs, who themselves have gone through M&As, now offer local
ii Telecommunications Expense Management
and intraLATA service. And the remaining RBOCs, now referred to as
ILECs (for incumbent local exchange carriers), face additional competi­
tion from CLECs, or competitive local exchange carriers. By the way,
ILECs are anxiously awaiting regulatory and judicial approval to go into
the interexchange carrier business - in other words, they want to offer
long distance services.
Has this confusing world gotten more confusing? You bet.
The major RBOCs today are Bell Atlantic, SBC, BellSouth and US
West. Bell Atlantic recently acquired NYNEX and is about to merge with
GTE. SBC recently acquired Pacific Telesis and Ameritech. Qwest is buy­
ing US West. Collectively, these four RBOCs control over 95% of the local
exchange revenues.
The major IXCs are AT&T, MCI/WorldCom and Sprint. Collectively,
these three IXCs control over 95% of the interexchange revenues.
Where we once endorsed a monopoly then opted for its breakup, we
now see developing an oligopoly or a condition where the telecommuni­
cations industry is coalescing into a few significant supercarriers.
In an effort to minimize confusion as you read through this book,
we’re going to refer to RBOCs and ILECs as local telephone companies.
Well refer to IXCs as long distance carriers. If we slip in a term or two
you don’t recognize, just flip back to the Glossary where hopefully you’ll
find a definition.
We’re going to do our best to dispel the myths and remove as much
confusion as possible. In doing so, we hope to uncover ways for you to
save some money.
Introduction iii