MuskogeePhoenix.com, Muskogee, OK

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March 18, 2010

THE PEOPLE SPEAK: Toll-free calling will not be free



The proposed Oklahoma toll free calling plan cannot and will not be free.

With the proposed changes I will pay an additional tax of $153 with no incremental benefit. The proposed tax is being applied to subsidize someone else’s choice to live in rural Oklahoma.

A residential customer who elects to live in Grant County pays as little as $8 per month for the same landline service I have in Tahlequah. My wife and I have been subsidizing my counterparts in Grant County for many years through the Oklahoma Corporation Commission tax program on my monthly AT&T; billing. In a different time that might have had some merit. It neither applies nor makes economic sense in the rapidly changing communications world we live and work in 2010.

We should no longer fund programs through taxes that were applicable to the Commission in an entirely different era. There are no boundaries in a wireless world and I should no longer be required to pay taxes and pay subsidies to companies and customers who are trying to adapt to the 1990s while the rest of us are well into the 21st century.

This proposed tax increase is not about providing me or any Oklahoman with a new or enhanced service. Rather, it is about many Oklahomans paying more to subsidize someone who chooses to reside in Grant County or some other less populated region.

It is time to get rid of the current taxes that subsidize the $8 monthly access rate I have been subsidizing and that the OCC has forced me and every other Oklahoman to pay for, and let the free market determine the charge and level of service whether you live in Cherokee County or Cherokee, Oklahoma.

The proposal is not free. We need to encourage the OCC to stop looking into the future through a rear view mirror. Progress is not in our past. It is in our future. The OCC needs to give up their rotary dial and eight-track tapes and catch up.

JERRY COOK

Tahlequah

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