Presubscribed Interexchange Carrier Charge

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please improve this article if you can. (September 2006)

PICC (Presubscribed Interexchange Carrier Charge) is a charge that United States long distance telephone companies pay to incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) to help recover local loop costs.

Local companies charge long-distance providers to connect callers to their network. Every time a long-distance call is made, it must first be routed by the local phone company. In the past, the charge for this routing was billed based on the length of the call. In reality, however, the cost of local access depends more on the number of phone lines. As a consequence, the FCC ordered local access charges be billed on a per-line basis and per minute fees be decreased. This is the origin of the PICC.

These charges usually show up monthly on long distance bills. The FCC allows long-distance companies to charge it but limits how much they charge. The money is supposed to be remitted by the long distance company to the local phone company. This is a per-line access charge imposed on businesses that have more than one business telephone line in their premises. PICC charges should never be charged on residential service.^{[citation needed]}

PICC charges are also referred to as the "Carrier Line Charge".