Tax & Fees Increase

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lbmofo
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Re: Tax & Fees Increase

Post by lbmofo » Mon Dec 03, 2012 10:31 am

van027 wrote:I'd like to know who increased my monthly tax/fee by $2.09/month (an overall increase of $2.35 since January). That's a big jump.
There is a portion of the monthly RRF that everyone pays (same amount) no matter where you live:

Regulatory Compliance Fee $1.78
911 Service Fee $1.59
Federal Universal Service Charge $0.39

Digging some more, this amount used to be $3.47 when the monthly RRF started in 2010.
Currently, this amount is $3.76 (don't know if this amount came directly from $3.47 or incrementally)

https://go.ooma.com/tax_calculator

The other portion of your monthly RRF would be "State and local taxes, fees and surcharges." This is where most jumps are coming from I am thinking.

These charges include taxes, fees and surcharges imposed by state, county, parish, borough, district and municipal governments, such as state universal service funds, local 911 services, sales and utility taxes and other local taxes, fees and surcharges, based on the registered location of your Ooma device. Some of these fees are government mandated charges and others are charges Ooma passes through to you.

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MartianRabbit
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Re: Tax & Fees Increase

Post by MartianRabbit » Tue Dec 04, 2012 12:32 am

Wow! Nice thread!

Hi Everyone, I am a new Ooma Subscriber and this is my first post! It all started with a close friend of mine (Also an Ooma subscriber) going through the research of bundled vs unbundled services Television, Internet and Telephone. I was actually ready to pull the trigger on a double play with Comcast (Television and Phone), till I talked with my friend, and was getting a real pile of BS from the guy pushing the bundled services for the tripple play, which included all three services. At first he was telling me Comcast didn't have any business class Services in my area. Then there are porting issues wth DSL line share, and the VIOP costs would go up to $38.00 a month after the 1st year. I basically called comcast and promptly cancelled the install because the thought of loosing my Internet due to a porting mishap was too much of a freak out! Although this Comcast sales guy asured me porting can occur as long as you can get a DSL dry loop.

Lets face it, the regulators and governments are starving and they are taxing everyting. I however had diferent issues with my Internet based hobby, being a Direct TV customer and telephone serivce with AT&T (used to be SBC, used to be Pac Bell) controlling the price and getting everything to work to just get better service.

I was the first in my neighborhood to get on an extedned network as I was a dialup user for years and when I moved, we were 17,000 plus feet from the CO and Dialup was still the only option (about 24k/s Baud rate) till I heard about Speakesy and ISDL in 2000 and had lived in the place we are now for 2 years. So as technology grew at the time 12 years ago ISDL became available (6 time faster than 24,000 baud dialup). Once the Fiber Extension came into the hood in 2002, I went back to then Speakeasy and upgraded to 1.5Mb/128Kb. Then about 5 years later, Covad had full reach into the neighborhood with their new backhall and had speakeasy upgrade me to 3Mb/768Kb. Been that way for 5 years now, and decided looking at bundled services vs the unbundled sevices was getting expensive and needed to just spend the time on the research.


The tripple play deals are for users that just want the three basic services ( you can really get the costs down but only for a limited time). Get the 2 year deals for signing up, then by the time 2 years are up, the costs are about the same, and you would have to go through the process all over again with 2 year obligations, and a possible vendor change. I just don't have the time to fiddle every couple of years and jack around these three services. So did a ton research and this is what the breakdown is and what happened.

Being a Direct TV customer because Viacom - ATT - SBC back to ATT now Comcast, I was fed up with the Cable service because they would not upgrade the cable systems for broadband Internet. So I have been a Direct TV customer now for 12 years.

As stated above I have been a speakessy now Megapath customer for almost 14 years.

And finally the AT&T phone which didn't matter who owned it, it was always expensive. Remember the line share comments? well, I know them to be true and there is plenty of talk in these forums about the nightmares of DSL services being cancelled along with the porting process.

100.00 for direct TV
93.50 for Megapath/Speakeasy Internet
48.00 for ATT Phone

Total 241.50 a month for all three services.


So the research began for me, coupled with the input and research from my friend, I came up with this solution. Not a cheap one bbased on a lot who post against this forum but not a bad deal based on my long term costs, my hobbies and what I am willing to pay.

So after I called comast and cancelled, I decided to just call Megapath/Speakeasy and talked with their sales group, and discovered they are strictly busness class and no longer accept or build out residential cicuits (I was grandfathered in) This made me extreamly uneasy as there are horror stories of other providers switching to business class supprted only services and dumping their residential customers. The $93.50 I had been paying was for a Shell account, 8 mailboxes, 5 static IP's and the 3Mb/768Kb. Speakeasy indicated I could go to 6Mb/512Kb for 128.00 a month. Lose my upload speed? No way! Pay 35.00 more a month for less than a modest increase and a 14 year customer. Double No Way!

The Direct TV all my equipment was approx 10-12 years old except the DVR, which we were on our 3rd replacement (also pay a 7.00 a month equipment replacement charge). The $100.00 bucks is the Choice Extra Classic package with 3 addtional recievers for a total of 4 rooms.

The AT&T phone with 3 way calling and Caller ID is $48.00


I simpley started with the Dirct TV service, and since all me equipment was old, I inquired about getting an upgrade for all of it. I am now on a Whole home system, with a Direct Plus HD DVR in the main living room, and the Directv HD reciever in the master bedroom, an addtional Direct Plus DVR and a Directv Standard reciever to reequip all the rooms that had the old equipment.

Te installation and equipment charges was 128.00, which included a new antenna, the equipment installed, which is all now Internet enabled with the Cinema Kit ( which was thrown in at no extra charge and am getting a 10.00 off per moth charge by allowing Direct payments via a credit card or auto payment from your bank, didn't matter which).

So the 10.00 dollars savings pays for the equipment in the first year and my net payments didn't go up, but will increase to 110.00 after the first year. To me, getting all new HD equipment and the cinema kit to Intenet enable the service was a great deal, and based on the long term costs for Dishnet didn't make any sense to change services, when I got a pretty good deal for the upgrade.

So now to the Inernet delema I was in play. I did the reseach and quickly found that Comcast does have Business class service and compaired to the price I was paying Speakeasy/Megapath, these costs were very competative. So for 3 dollars a month more this is what I got.

For a 3 year locked in price of 96.00 dollars I got 21Mb/3.8Mb, 5 static IP's about 8 mailboxes (which I don't realy use) but the static IP, and the massive bandwidth increase was the key!

So now with HD content, and the fact we also have Netflix, the Internet speeds are handling the high demand for bandwidth!! And now that the DSL line is being cancelled, the porting issue goes away, and so does that 48.00 a month ATT phone bill!! You see, I had already baught into the Ooma and loved the quality and premier services, it just all came together.

$100.00 for now full HD Direct TV
$ 96.00 for now 21Mb/3.8Mb broadband with 5 static IP's
$ 10.00 for Ooma

Total = 206.00 charges a month.

So I got some long term savings but also got what I wanted in speed, quality, and flexibility. So all in all I am coming out ahead! 38.00 bucks a month less, serious fast download and upload, saving tons of time waiting, and now everything we view is in HD, so I am a happy customer!! oh, and a 3-4 dollars month charge for a few more taxes is still less than what I would pay overall, and now I get two lines!!

So all things being relative, Ooma is a great deal, love the features, and can't wait till the porting process is completed!

Good luck to those who are looking for all three services, and keep in mind some times bundling works and some times it does not. MartianRabbit :cool:

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lbmofo
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Re: Tax & Fees Increase

Post by lbmofo » Tue Dec 04, 2012 5:49 pm

Welcome MartianRabbit. $96/mos for cable internet is a bit much; do you need those static IPs?

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MartianRabbit
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Joined:Mon Dec 03, 2012 9:44 pm

Re: Tax & Fees Increase

Post by MartianRabbit » Tue Dec 04, 2012 11:44 pm

Yes I do, because I run all my own internet based services. SMTP, DNS, WWW (htttp, https) and NTP. I host a few websites, manage 250 mail aliases, have my own webmail portal and tie in my own smart devices for these services, I am also backup DNS for several other geeky friends as well as a time source. I like to play with time, and run a GPSDO stratum 1 time server meshed with several stratum 1 peers on the Internet with 2 internet facing stratum 2 NTP servers that will soon be part of the pool.ntp.org volunteers (Statics Required). It is sort of a hobby and what I do for a living. The package I just got from comcast, I can't beat or find a better provider for both the statics and the bandwidth for the price.

Also with business class running these serivces within reasonable Internet usage policy, I can do just about anything staying legal of course. You can't host your own services on any of the major Residential customer providors based on their Internet use policies. Speakeasy was the only exception that I know of, and is in fact why I was with them so long for their liberal Internet use policies.

With Dual serivces for Redundancy and High availabity, I do use all the Statics. The upload speed alone is 7 time faster than what I had. All my websites run much faster, mail to the smart devices pulls much faster, and with the download increase, it takes far less time synch up and upgrade softare packages and patches on my servers. So, what I do with all of this at the price is ralatively reasonable to me.

On another note, Ooma just called me today on my temp number I selected when I activated my Telo indicating my number will transfer tomorrow and I put in the Port request like 3 days ago. Is that fast or what!! MartianRabbit :cool:

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