What is the federal “subscriber line charge” (SLC)?
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requires that local telephone companies recover a portion of the costs of the facilities we use to connect your home or business for services through a monthly assessment on all residential and business customers. Commonly known as the federal “subscriber line charge,” this assessment is part of the FCC’s effort to promote a competitive framework for the U.S. telecom industry. The federal SLC is a flat monthly charge assessed directly on your bill. The FCC established the federal SLC as a way to reduce the “access charges” paid by long-distance companies but still compensate local companies for the use of our networks by those carriers to gain “access” to their customers. Prior to the establishment of the SLC, long-distance carriers were assessed a per-minute “access” charge to use our facilities, but the FCC changed the way we charge for that cost. For purposes of competition, the FCC decided to target end-user customers more directly for th
The Federal Communications Commission authorizes local telephone companies to recover a portion of the costs of the facilities we use to connect your home or business for services through a monthly assessment on all residential and business customers. The federal “subscriber line charge” (SLC) assessment is part of the FCC’s effort to support competition in the telecom market. The federal SLC is a flat monthly charge assessed directly on your bill. The federal SLCs for residential and single-line business customers are capped at $6.50 per month, and at $9.20 per line, per month for multi-line businesses. The federal SLCs result in no additional revenue for Chesnee Communications.
