ALJ/KLM/tcg Mailed 8/28/2003

BEFORE THE PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

Petition of AT&T Communications of California, Inc. for a Commission Order Instituting Rulemaking to Adopt, Amend or Repeal a Regulation Pursuant to California Public Utilities Code Section 1708.5 to Implement Cost-Based Intrastate Carrier Access Charges.	Petition 01-10-008 (Filed October 4, 2001)
Order Instituting Rulemaking to Review Policies Concerning Intrastate Carrier Access Charges.	FILED PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSION AUGUST 21, 2003 SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA RULEMAKING 03-08-018

DECISION GRANTING PETITION OF AT&T COMMUNICATIONS OF CALIFORNIA AND ORDER INSTITUTING RULEMAKING

TO REVIEW POLICIES CONCERNING

INTRASTATE CARRIER ACCESS CHARGES

Summary

This order grants in part the petition of AT&T Communications of California, Inc. (AT&T) to institute a rulemaking to review intrastate carrier access charges. The term "access charges" refers to charges imposed by local exchange carriers (LECs) such as Pacific Bell Telephone Company (herein referred to as SBC) on interexchange carriers (IEC) such as AT&T for using the LEC's local exchange network. Interexchange carriers use this switched access to originate and terminate long distance calls to the vast majority of California residential and business customers.

We open this rulemaking in recognition that circumstances have changed since the Commission made significant changes to access charges in 1994. At this time, the Commission will consider reductions to the access charges of SBC and Verizon only. In addition, as explained below, we will limit the scope of this proceeding to the network interconnection charge (NIC) portion of SBC's access charges and the transport interconnection charge (TIC) of Verizon's access charges.