Q. I turned in my converter box to Comcast three years ago. I just found out that I have been charged $3.79 every month for the past three years for a converter box that I no longer have. When I complained to Comcast, I was told it was my responsibility to call it to their attention. Robin from customer service informed me that they only had to credit me six months. Shouldn’t the company be responsible for removing these charges from my bill?

GERALDINE RYAN
Lawrenceville

A. The company agrees with you, Geraldine. Comcast’s Jody Doherty asked customer care agents to research your account. You are correct. The three years worth of $3.79 monthly payments were deducted in error. Ms. Doherty says Comcast will give you a full refund of all 36 or so payments, along with its apology.

«Mrs. Ryan is a valued customer,» said Ms. Doherty. «Comcast prides itself on stellar service and we thank her for bringing this problem to our attention.»

So what happened to the «we only have to refund six months worth of payments»? You were charged for a service you did not receive. Unless you signed a contract that specifically gives a company a refund deadline, there is no six-month limit on errors.

Company reps might say they can only refund six months. That may be all that particular person is authorized to refund; to get the rest, perhaps you have to talk to a supervisor.

Company reps might tell you it is their company policy to refund only six months. That could well be true, but that does not mean you have to accept the company policy. That policy is often based on how many months of easy computer access a customer rep has.

Just because a customer service person tells you that refunds are limited to three months or six months doesn’t make it so by law.

That said, this is another example of why it is important to look closely at what we are paying for on our monthly bills. Mistakes happen and the sooner we catch them, the easier they are to fix.

Q. When I opened my Verizon bill, I was surprised by a $2 charge for long-distance service that I never knew I had. I didn’t order it. Verizon said I had this «timeless» long-distance plan for a while. Before there had been no monthly fee and no charge if I didn’t make any long-distance calls. Now Verizon says I have to pay $2 a month not to make long-distance calls and if I don’t want to pay the fee, I have to pay Verizon $5 to take the charge off. What’s going on?

CHUCK BERTRAM
Plum

A. Verizon is doing what AT&T did a while back, surprising old customers with a new charge. In fact, that may be how many of you became Verizon «timeless» customers. Back when AT&T started charging customers a monthly fee for a long-distance service few people realized they had, you might have switched to Verizon’s no-monthly-fee plan.

The people most likely to be surprised by this charge are those who rarely, if ever, make long-distance telephone calls. If you were on this «timeless plan» and didn’t make long-distance calls, you wouldn’t see any sign of the timeless program on your bill.

As of Aug. 1, that changed. Customers listed under Verizon’s «timeless plan» will now be charged a $2 monthly fee that will allow them to make in-state long-distance and state-to-state, direct-dialed long-distance calls for 10 cents a minute.

If you don’t want to pay that $2 charge, you can change to a different Verizon long-distance plan and pay 35 cents per minute with no monthly fees. You can say you want to drop long-distance plans altogether or you can switch long-distance carriers.

Verizon’s Lee Gierczynski said there is no fee for switching plans or dropping long-distance. There is a $5 fee for switching from one long-distance company to another.

My husband does an amazing job filing old bills. So I had no doubt he could dig up more than three years’ worth of MCI bills if we ever wanted to actually calculate a refund on our 2006 federal income tax return for a now-defunct, long-distance phone tax.

My husband found those bills -- or most of them. We quickly concluded that we’re not going to make big money by trying to file yet another tax form.

I doubt whether you would, either. So maybe we don’t need to feel guilty if we opt for the easy out on this one.

Refund based on excise tax

Recently, the Internal Revenue Service announced guidelines for a onetime tax refund based on the old excise tax on long-distance phone service. The refund is available to anyone who paid long-distance taxes on landline, cell phone or Voice over Internet Protocol service.

The federal government lost a series of cases in which courts held that the 108-year-old tax didn’t apply to long-distance service as it’s billed today. The government stopped collecting the excise tax on long-distance service as of July 31.

The IRS refund applies to the excise taxes paid after Feb. 28, 2003, and before Aug. 1, 2006.

To get the easy money, taxpayers only have to fill out one additional line on their 2006 income tax return. You don’t need your old bills. You won’t have to itemize deductions to get this refund.

And if you don’t typically file a tax return because you don’t owe taxes, you’d want to file what’s called a Form 1040EZ-T to get the phone refund.

The standard refunds are:

• A maximum refund of $60 for a family of four or more.
• A $50 refund for a family of three.
• A $40 refund for two.
• A $30 refund for a single filer.

«It’s going to be based on the number of exemptions you’re claiming on your 2006 tax return,» said E. H. Rubinsky, tax analyst for RIA, a provider of tax information and software to tax professionals.

«They’re trying to simplify this.»

The IRS said the standard amount is based on telephone usage data and reflects the tax paid by similar-size households.

The most recent rate for the excise tax was 3%.

Then again, individuals who think they’re being shortchanged also have the option of calculating the tax by finding their old bills and filling out the new Form 8913.

But because the IRS refund applies to the excise taxes paid dating back more than three years, filers would potentially need to dig up 41 months of old phone records.

Many tax experts suggest that consumers simply take the refund money on the table and skip the scavenger hunt for old bills.

«Leave that garbage bag at home, where it belongs. Don’t bring it to my office,» joked James Jenkins, president of Jenkins & Co., a tax firm in Southfield.

Paperwork hunt

To check this out, I looked at our old bills.

My husband and I have our long-distance service through one carrier. Our local service is through another carrier. So we needed only the long-distance bills from MCI.

But it helps to eyeball a few bills to see what kind of taxes you’ve been paying.

At our house, we’d get $50 without digging up any bills. That’s the standard refund for two parents and one child.

The actual excise tax?

A random look at our bills showed that we paid anywhere from 35 cents to 55 cents a month from 2003 through the time the tax expired.

For example, we paid 55 cents for the tax on our long-distance bill in June 2006. That bill totaled $21.17.

Say we even paid 60 cents a month each month for 41 months, we’d still be talking about only $24.60 in excise taxes.

The standard refunds start looking more reasonable.

Yes, the tax refund includes some interest. But we’re also talking about extra work digging up bills -- and filling out forms.

Certainly, there are exceptions.

If you’re single and someone who uses long-distance a lot, you might come up with a bigger refund on your own.

Or if you have more than one phone service, say, long-distance service for a landline and cell phone service, you might be able to get a bigger refund by finding your old bills, said Maggie Doedtman, tax advice manager for H&R Block in Kansas City, Miss.

But in most cases, don’t waste your time digging.

Telephone tax refunds

• Businesses and nonprofits are required to base their telephone tax refund on the actual amount of the tax paid. The IRS last week said it is continuing to work on a reasonable method for estimating those
• Remember, the excise tax continues to apply to local service. The IRS does not refund taxes on local service.
• Individuals are expected to receive about $10 billion in telephone tax refunds next year, economists at the U. S. Department of Treasury say.

The Community Agency for Senior Citizens is a good place to start if you have questions about care
Monday, November 29, 2004

As executive director of the Community Agency for Senior Citizens (CASC), Richard Reetz can relate to the dilemma that adult children face when trying to care for aging parents and loved ones from afar.

While Reetz was living on Staten Island, trying to balance his responsibilities on the job and at home, he was also trying to care for his own older parents back «home» in his native Massachusetts. His sister, his only sibling, lived even further away, in California.

Although his parents have since passed away, Reetz remembers «it wasn’t easy» from 400 miles away to make sure they had the proper services and care.

«I sympathize with any Staten Islander who has to care for a parent or loved one who lives out of state, or even off the Island.

»And I sympathize with those adult children who grew up on Staten Island but moved away to make their own lives, and now have to worry about care for a parent or loved one who still lives here," said Reetz.

More than 5 million of the 34 million Americans caring for older family members live more than an hour away from the relative needing care, according to statistics from the MetLife Mature Market Institute. The institute and the National Alliance for Caregiving released a study in July, «Miles Away: The MetLife Study of Long-Distance Caregiving,» that found long-distance caregivers live an average of 450 miles or 7.2 hours away from the care recipient.

It’s a trend that’s expected to grow, in part because our society is increasingly aging and mobile, with parents and children relocating away from each other for reasons such as a job change or a retirement home.

«The problem is that the so-called ’extended-family’ just doesn’t exist anymore, once you get down to the second and third generations,» said Reetz.

But Reetz, whose agency is the jumping-off point for senior services on the Island, has some tips for those having to care for aging loved ones by long distance.

First, he said, try to identify the exact municipality, county and state of residence of your parent or loved one. «That may sound easy, but once you get out of New York City, you run into villages and towns, townships, cities, counties and regions. It’s a whole new ball game,» Reetz noted.

Once you get this information, however, you can identify the agency or agencies that provide services to seniors in the area and make contact with them. «You can determine what services are available and how services can be coordinated,» he said. The federal Older American Act provides funding to each state for services for the aging, and determines how those funds and services are dispersed.

Adult children trying to provide services to a parent or loved one living on the Island can call the city’s Department for the Aging or contact CASC directly, Reetz said.

The city funds a network of social service, transportation and nutrition programs for seniors. «Although there are gaps in service, and we’ve weathered some budget cuts, as a whole, New York City is very generous with its funding and types of services for the elderly, when compared with other municipalities,» he observed.

What not to do, Reetz said, is feel guilty about not being there to care for a loved one. Neither should an adult child try to impose care on a parent or loved one.

«Sometimes we feel guilty that we can’t be there, and we want to make things easier. But however well-intentioned we might be, we can’t make people do something, such as move in with you or move to a care facility or accept live-in help, against their wishes,» he said.

The best advice, experts say, is to be proactive in making care-giving choices.

Arrangements for care should be made «with mutual respect,» for the adult child and parent, and ideally while a parent or loved one is well enough to participate in the decision-making process, Reetz said. «As difficult as it may be to raise the subject of care, these things should be discussed together,» he said.

Discussion can occur while a child is visiting a parent in his or her home, or while a parent is visiting the home of a grown child. An adult child can express concern, but a parent or loved one should express his or her preferences for care.

«You can say something like ’Mom, you are healthy now, but when and if you couldn’t manage on your own, what do you think you would like to do? And since I can’t be there, what would you want me to do?’ Once it’s out on the table, it gets the discussion going,» Reetz suggested.

To reach CASC, call (718) 981–6226. The agency’s office is located at 56 Bay St. in St. George.

Diane Lore is a feature writer and columnist with the Lifestyle section of the Staten Island Advance. You may e-mail her at lore@siadvance.com.

By TAKAMITSU SAWA

It looks as though Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is determined to push through postal privatization as the ultimate goal of his structural reform efforts.

It is generally agreed that government enterprise should not threaten private business and that privatization is desirable without qualification. Few doubt that the privatizations of Japanese National Railways and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corp. in the 1980s were successful.

When it was privatized, JNR was split into six regional passenger railway companies and a freight railway company, all of the JR group. Although residents of remote, sparsely populated areas were inconvenienced by the abolition of deficit-ridden lines, most Japanese greatly benefited from JNR’s privatization, as it improved passenger service and cut train fares. High-speed Shinkansen trains, however, still charge high fares, with little competition from higher-cost airlines and inexpensive but slower buses.

As for the the telecom giant, it was privatized as NTT, but it was not divided into regional units. The privatization coincided with the launch of three telecom companies that was supposed to make the market competitive. Still, NTT monopolized intra-city telephone circuits, forcing its three new rivals to specialize in long-distance telecommunications.

The liberalization of the telecom market started in an environment of unfair competition. For example, in relaying a long-distance call from Kyoto to Tokyo, Daini Denden -- now known as KDDI -- provided wireless communications between base stations in the two cities. NTT offered the use of individual telephones in Kyoto and Tokyo and its intra-city circuits between base stations, but its rivals had to pay for the use.

Then the market was hit by the unforeseen boom in the popularity of cell phones, e-mail and and Internet-based telephone service. With the sharp decrease in international and long-distance domestic telephone calls, the use of subscriber phones declined. Use of public telephones is steadily decreasing.

There is no doubt that the privatizations of JNR and NTT successfully enhanced public convenience.

The business of networks -- be they railways, telecom-related, power grids, highways or mail services -- usually starts as a national enterprise. That’s because the business requires a huge initial investment for laying a national network that offers «universal service»: All regions must be covered.

It is generally agreed that it would be unfair to limit expanded mail delivery, new supplies of electricity and the construction of railways and highways to urban areas with high population densities. Similarly, it would be unreasonable to expect profit-seeking private enterprise to offer universal service.

For example, the nation’s 10 electric power companies are required to supply power to any region, including remote rural areas and isolated islands.

However, network businesses sometimes develop problems peculiar to monopolistic activities, such as redundant labor, inefficiency from the practice of basing service charges on capital investment, and the tendency to maintain costs and profits at levels that do not directly correlate to demand. The result is high charges, with chronic deficits covered by tax revenues.

In Japan’s high-growth years, when steady growth in tax revenues was taken for granted, few complained about using tax money to cover JNR’s deficits. After the international oil crunches, though, Japan entered a slow-growth period, and the rate of tax-revenue increases slipped, causing a chronic budget deficit.

There was consensus that much of the deficit stemmed from the use of tax money to subsidize national enterprises, and this sparked efforts to reform JNR. To eliminate JNR’s deficit, it was mandatory to abolish 3,000 km of unprofitable rail lines and to dismiss redundant workers.

It was impossible to implement drastic reform while JNR remained a national enterprise with the government covering operating deficits. Privatization was the only way to eliminate the chronic deficit. The rationale was that a private enterprise would go bankrupt if it continued to post deficits.

However, private enterprise is not always superior to government service. In the United States, where there are calls to privatize prisons, nobody would deny that human-rights abuses could occur in private prisons. In Iraq, some military services are manned by mercenaries from private companies. This is likely to have been a factor in the abuse cases reported in Iraqi prisons.

As the economist John Maynard Keyes said, distinction must be made between what the government should do and what it should not do.

Takamitsu Sawa, professor of economics at Kyoto University, is also the director of the university’s Institute of Economic Research.

The Japan Times: Nov. 29, 2004

New Chip Offers the Industry’s Best Sensitivity Values for Long Distance Coverage

HEILBRONN, Germany, Nov. 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Atmel(R) Corporation
(Nasdaq: ATML), a global leader in the development and fabrication of advanced
semiconductor solutions, announced today the availability of its new 2.4-GHz
transceiver IC ATR2806 manufactured using Atmel’s advanced SiGe BiCMOS
process. The new ATR2806 is especially designed for digital cordless telephone
applications, but can also be used for wireless data applications such as
wireless Internet access, headsets, games and home entertainment. This new
low-IF device provides several unique features such as multiple handset
operation and long distance coverage due to its excellent sensitivity (-93 dBm
at full data transmit bit rate of 1.152 Mbit/s).

The ATR2806 is a highly integrated transceiver, which includes in the
receive path a low-noise amplifier, image rejection mixer, low-IF filter,
demodulator, RSSI and RX data as digital signal. It also includes a fully
integrated VCO and PLL with an integrated Gaussian filter. Due to the high
integration, only a few components are needed to design the RF section of a
cordless telephone. SAW filtering, matching components, IF tank circuitry, and
demodulator tank are not needed. The circuit also provides a digital receive
signal, thus eliminating the need for any external data slicer.

The IC has a flexible interface to the baseband, so any standard DCT
baseband IC can be used. Various data transmit bit rates are supported (1.152
Mbit/s and 576 Kbit/s).

Another main benefit is the IC’s outstandingly high sensitivity of -99
dBm. This is a value not reached by any competing product; standard values are
usually up to -94 dBm. This allows coverage of longer distances (about 300 m).
The new architecture also enables longer talk and standby time compared to
conventional concepts. Thanks to the ATR2806’s fast-settling PLL, the base
station can support up to 10 handsets (multiple handset function), whereas
competitive products, using fixed data transmit rates, can only handle up to a
maximum of 4 handsets.

To support design-in, demo boards with documentation, test results,
schematics and Gerber files are also available.

Samples of the low-IF transceiver IC ATR2806 in QFN32 packages are
available now. Pricing starts at 4.00 US$ (10 k).

Footnote

IF = Intermediate Frequency
PLL = Phase Locked Loop
RSSI = Receive Signal Strength Indicator
VCO = Voltage Controlled Oscillator

About Atmel

Atmel is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of
microcontrollers, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory and radio
frequency (RF) components. Leveraging one of the industry’s broadest
intellectual property (IP) technology portfolios, Atmel is able to provide the
electronics industry with complete system solutions. Focused on consumer,
industrial, security, communications, computing and automotive markets, Atmel
ICs can be found Everywhere You Are(SM).

NOTE: Atmel(R), logo and combinations thereof, are registered trademarks,
and Everywhere You Are(SM) is the trademark of Atmel Corporation or its
subsidiaries. Other terms and product names may be trademarks of others.

Information:
Atmel’s 2.4-GHz transceiver IC ATR2806 product information may be
retrieved at: [ >>> ]

Press Contacts:

Dr. Susanne van Clewe, Marcom Manager Communications and Automotive
Products
Phone: +49 7131 67–2081, Email: susanne.van-clewe@hno.atmel.com

Clive Over, Director of Press Relations — USA and Asia
Phone: +1 408 451 2855, Email: cliveover@atmel.com

Veronique Sablereau, Corporate Communications Manager — Europe
Phone: +33 1 30 60 70 68, Fax: + 49 7131 67–2423, Email:
veronique.sablereau@atmel.com

By Hadar Horesh

«Dry run» launches of products and services that are inaccessible to the consumer have become de rigueur in the communications sector. Cellcom announced «Third Generation Services» that would enable video communications between subscribers, but didn’t really tell us that the infrastructure covered only a small area of the country, the devices were expensive and hard to come by, and the last thing the cellular service provider really wanted was mass demand for this nonexistent service.

Internet service provider Netvision entered the international long distance calls market with a ploy that offered service only to subscribers with a huge number of calls to North America. That may not have actually constituted long distance service, but it made the company look like it was competing in the international calls market a few weeks earlier than it actually had service for all.

But the cable television sector’s launch of telephone service was the greatest feint of all. In light of state-run phone company Bezeq’s image as an unbeatable monopoly, and because all previous attempts to break it have failed, many hoped that this time was the real thing. No more empty politicians’ declarations of «the dawn of the age of competition,» but real competition, using the cable television network that already reaches 97 percent of Israeli households.

When the hoped-for declaration came, exactly on the date the cable companies had promised, the headlines shouted the end of the communications monopoly so loudly it was virtually audible. But behind the headlines, it became clear that, at least for the moment, nothing in the sector has changed. Bezeq still rules the roost, and the cable companies don’t care to shake the tree.

Using a sophisticated price list, they explained that the new service is just a small perk they plan at the moment to offer a chosen few subscribers (perhaps those who threatened to desert in favor of satellite TV? No one said so explicitly, but the cable companies also don’t deny it). A policy of «customer retention» in multichannel television does not constitute competition with Bezeq.

The cable companies didn’t choose the timing of the declared launch for business purposes or for public relations, as other companies have done. They tried to meet conditions they accepted when they got permission to merge into a single cable television company. The conditions mandated they had to launch a commercial telephone network. And what do you do when you miss a deadline? Announce a service that doesn’t actually exist.

We can hope it’s just a minor technical problem, and the CEO of the cable companies’ joint operations Ram Belinkov will live up to his promises to provide the service to all in a matter of months. But the unnecessary and misleading launch could have been avoided simply: those who determined that the cable telephone network had to go live in a year, could have given them a reasonable extension to make the launch of cable telephone service a real celebration for communications consumers.

By KIMBERLY BLANTON The Boston Globe

FAIRHAVEN, Mass. — Michael Brightman is reminded daily that workers in New Delhi do the same job he does.

His Indian counterparts routinely direct AT&T customers to him for long-distance billing problems that the New Delhi workers can’t answer.

Brightman and 139 others will be laid off this month from AT&T’s call center on Massachusetts’ southeastern coast. AT&T said the work force reduction resulted from a July decision to phase out residential long-distance service.

«This work did not move. It went away,» said spokeswoman Tracey Belko. «We are not moving any of these jobs overseas.»

Brightman and co-workers picketing here last month don’t buy it. To them, jobs are being lost in the United States, while increasing overseas. Union officials said AT&T gave information on its offshore activity in January showing one out of four AT&T customer calls were handled by independent U.S. contractors employing 1,400 workers overseas.

In five years, AT&T has cut its national call-center employment by half, to 3,270, the union said. «Is it coincidental, or is it a shift?» Brightman asked about his layoff.

Data on numbers of U.S. jobs moving overseas in recent years are scattered and unreliable. As the AT&T example shows, jobs may be cut in the United States, and employment may increase overseas, but companies are reluctant to draw connections between the two, while unions are only too willing to do so. Groups such as the U. S. Chamber of Commerce peg the number at perhaps 200,000 jobs a year.

But a new report commissioned by a bipartisan congressional commission said 406,000 jobs will migrate overseas this year, double the conventional wisdom. This trend is expected to continue for several years as a greater variety of jobs are offshored, including to Latin America and the Caribbean.

Job movement overseas «is absolutely accelerating, and it’s changing in its nature,» said Kate Bronfenbrenner, a professor in Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, who prepared the report for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. «Whereas in 2001 it was almost all in manufacturing, now we see an increase in information technology, communications, financial services, and white-collar work, from research and design to back office.» The report will be presented at public hearings in Seattle in January.

Some economists cite growing numbers of U.S. jobs transplanted overseas as the main reason for slow employment growth during the current economy recovery. Another 400,000 jobs added to the total 1.8 million jobs created in the United States in 2004 would be «a big deal,» said Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley’s chief economist. «Offshore labor pools have become increasingly attractive,» he said, and «more and more of the new hiring incrementally is occurring offshore.»

But Shang-Jin Wei of the International Monetary Fund argued when a company employs people overseas, lower costs and high profits enable it to hire elsewhere in the organization.

«We create one job for every job lost,» he said.

Greater ease in Internet and phone transmission, spiraling healthcare costs to cover U.S. employees, and more experience employing people in foreign lands are fueling overseas hiring for jobs that once would have remained here. The most compelling incentive remains the disparity between wages earned in the United States and in less-developed nations.

In India, a computer programmer with a college degree and two or three years’ experience earns about $20,000 a year, said firms that employ workers there. Indian workers who process financial transactions make $12,000 to $15,000. Call-center workers there earn about $1,200 a year, compared with Brightman’s $40,000 salary from AT&T.

The joint report, by Cornell and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, is the first to look at offshoring in all industries and to use the same method to compare two years, 2001 and 2004. Private consulting firms have examined specific industries. An often-cited study by Forrester Research last spring estimated 225,000 white-collar U.S. service jobs would locate overseas in 2004, bringing to 540,000 the total of those jobs now overseas. A 2004 study by Deloitte Research said 850,000 financial jobs could be headed overseas by 2010. The new report found that 204,000 jobs were moved overseas in 2001, doubling to 406,000 this year.

There is no reliable government data. The U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys employers on job relocations, but those data are widely viewed as too low. In the first quarter of 2004, the bureau reported 4,633 jobs were moved offshore. The bureau said it could not estimate second-quarter activity, due to incomplete information from employers.

«Companies are very reluctant to say what they’re doing,» said Ronil Hira, professor of public policy at Rochester Institute of Technology. «They don’t want to take the public-relations hit.»

To estimate blue- and white-collar job movements, Bronfenbrenner and UMass professor Stephanie Luce tallied reports of job transfers in the United States and foreign, English-language media in the first quarter of 2004. They then applied a multiplier to increase the job estimates and adjust for the underreporting.

In Mexico, for example, they estimated fully two-thirds of production shifts in 2004 were reported by the media, because all of the jobs were in manufacturing and were publicized by unions or confirmed by business filings to the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission, government applications for worker assistance under the federal Trade Adjustment Act, and state plant-closing notifications. In contrast, only one-third of jobs moving to Asia are reported, they said, because the region attracts smaller employers less likely to be in manufacturing and unlikely to report movements.

The U. S. Chamber of Commerce’s chief economist, Martin Regalia, criticized the 406,000 job-loss estimate in 2004 as at the «high end of any estimates out there.» The multiplier was arbitrary, he said, because it was not based on hard data. «I don’t think starting with news reports is the way to do scientific research.»

Bronfenbrenner defended her data as «extremely conservative» and said firms go to great lengths to suppress or downplay in the U.S. press any jobs shifts, though they may publicize them in the country where they are relocating.

For example, the report cites the U.S. consulting firm of Accenture Ltd., which last year told the Press Trust of India it would add 5,700 employees there by the end of 2004. Early this year, it laid off 90 employees at its Delaware software development office. While Accenture told The News Journal in Wilmington, Del., that India «is one of the areas we’re looking at,» it was never made clear whether the jobs were ultimately moved, the report said. The researchers ultimately could not produce a firm figure on job movement overseas in this case; the multiplier, she said, is intended to account for situations such as Accenture’s.

To make a connection between a layoff in the United States and job expansion in India is «simplistic,» said Fred Hawrysh, a spokesman for Accenture. Hawrysh said Accenture’s U.S. employment overall rose last year.

Dallas-based Texas Instruments has operated in Attleboro, Mass., since the 1920s. It is now laying off 1,180 in the plant, which makes pressure and temperature sensors. The jobs are being transferred to Texas Instruments plants in South Korea, Mexico, Malaysia, and China, said spokeswoman Linda Megathlin. The layoffs are part of a conversion of Attleboro from a manufacturing to a marketing and research facility. To staff the office, the company plans to hire about 100 engineers, technicians, and managers, she said.

Attleboro Mayor Kevin Dumas is philosophical about layoffs in his city. While Texas Instruments is no longer Attleboro’s biggest employer, «We’re also seeing an influx of new jobs coming open in the city,» he said.

All Jay Carvalho knows is he could make a good living, without a college degree, working for AT&T. Facing layoff, the 26-year-old has «no idea» what is next but said it won’t be easy to improve on this job, which pays about $40,000 a year, with benefits. «I’ll be happy if I get $10 an hour,» he said.

New Delhi: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd has decided to slash tariffs for leased line based Virtual Private Network (VPN) services by about 50 per cent from December 1.

The move would benefit corporate houses, which would now be able to take a 2Mbps connection from BSNL for as low as Rs 3.5 lakh per year compared to the existing tariff of Rs 6 lakh per annum.

The higher standard VPN services with 99 per cent assured quality level would cost Rs 7 lakh a year compared to Rs 12 lakh at present. The move is aimed at reducing the gap with the tariffs offered by private Internet Service Providers (ISP). VPN services are used by corporates to link up their retail chain and branch offices on a secure and dedicated communication network. Until now, private Internet Service Providers such as Sify have dominated the VPN market owing to lower cost of operations compared to long distance operators who are also competing for a share of this segment.

The BSNL move assumes significance as it comes at a time when a decision by Department of Telecom (DoT) to impose entry fee and licence fee on private Internet Service Providers for offering VPN services has come under heavy fire from the industry. The fresh levy would increase the cost of operations for private ISPs that is likely to be passed on to their consumers making Internet services such as VPN dearer.

ISPs have accused the DoT of imposing the entry fee at the behest of BSNL. The state-owned company had earlier objected to ISPs offering VPN services as it was beyond the scope of Internet operators’ licence. BSNL has even refused to give leased lines to the ISPs on grounds that the level playing field was not even. While long distance operators such as BSNL had to pay a licence fee of 15 per cent of the annual revenue, ISPs did not pay anything. This kept the costs of leased line service from long distance operators at a higher level compared to ISPs.

By John Mangalonzo/The Reporter News Editor

Nolan County Commissioners approved the technology plan proposal for the County-City Library during its meeting this week.

Library director Becky Brock laid out the e-rate discount plan proposal to the panel, which provides libraries with discounted telecommunications services.

Brock reported that she already secured city commissioners’ approval regarding the plan.

The discount is based on the participation in the national free/reduced lunch program for the school district, which the library is under.

Brock added that the application process can be lengthy and difficult, but feasible, and approvals from both the city and the county are required in order to receive the discount. She said that she already started the first phase of the application process.

«Based on the current figures, the library will be eligible for an 80 percent discount,» Brock said. The discount will be for July 2005 to June 2006.

Brock said she is planning to apply for discounted rates, which includes basic phone service, long distance service and cellular service.

Brock added that the library board approved the plan when it met in October. «I think that this plan would benefit the library,» Brock said.

On another library matter, the commissioners voted to have the library use their existing copy machine until they can add the lease of a new machine into the budget.

The discussion was in reference to the library’s request of a lease of a new copy machine.

Brock said that the staff has been experiencing problems with the machine they are currently using, which she described as being at least over 10-years-old.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority (Trai) is reportedly working out a new access deficit regime for international long distance calls. If so, it is barking up the wrong tree. While a reduction in a questionable charge is welcome, sound policy calls for more than just tampering with the quantum. It is small comfort that Trai has officially acknowledged that the present access deficit charge (ADC) on all telephone calls are too high and will be reduced shortly. But it is not enough. As we have said in these columns earlier, the ADC regime in its present form must be given a speedy burial.

Trai had said as much in more than one of its earlier assessments, which favoured a change to a revenue-share mechanism for implementing the ADC. It noted the current method „is complex, dependent on distance and whether the call is inter-circle or intra-circle…(and) creates an incentive to misreport the category of calls.“ More important, there is no clear categorisation of the loss to BSNL from rural telephony. Phone companies have no incentive to check the origin of any call terminating on their network, since regulations do not allow them to negotiate the rate they get for this.

Ironically, this is despite the fact that we already have a universal service obligation (USO) fund, financed by levies on all carriers, which is meant to subsidise rural telephony. A disbursement mechanism from the kitty is in place. There is no reason why the expenses meant for paying the ‘access deficit’ cannot come entirely out of the USO fund, by merging ADC with the latter. Trai had itself made such a suggestion last year, saying a USO-like revenue share represents a big improvement over the current per-minute ADC. The reason is that it removes the incentive to pass off calls originating from abroad as local ones. Remember, it is precisely on this point that BSNL and MTNL have taken Reliance to court. A flat revenue-share-based levy would certainly be far better than having one with such divergence — from 30p to 80p on national long-distance calls to Rs 4.25 on international ones.

The point is, if something has to be subsidised from levies on private parties, the charge should be simple and transparently administered. And it most certainly must not be big enough to create an incentive to avoid paying. Where the money is going and how should also be clear. The present per-call ADC fails the test: there are inherent incentives to conceal matters at more than one point, the charges are regarded as too high, the mechanism is dispute-prone. Having just one subsidy kitty and financing it with a simple levy on revenue, as with the USO fund, is far better.