> Real CLECs -- those that try to serve a broad based market, rather than > hack togethor a contrived market that will result in a high ration o > finbound to outbound calls, will do fine in the absence of reciprocal > compensation. Excuse me, but why should ILECs receive a free premium for calls to ISPs that happen to be CLECs, or to the CLECs that serve them? Reciprocal compensation wasn't a subsidy, it was a formalization of the notion that dollars follow the direction of call progress. IMHO, and I acknowledge that I don't actually have a stake in this since I wouldn't touch consumer services with a really long stick, this is simply a case of ILECs having agreed to something when they thought it would mean an inflow of revenue, discovering that they were wrong (surprise, surprise), and then wanting to re-write the rules. The fact that they've successfully propagandized surrounding the issue just makes it all the more annoying. Note that if this actually made sense, call recipients would be paying their carriers just as much per-minute as call originators, just as in the IP world, where the cash flows from both endpoints toward the peering session or mutual carrier at the center. At the moment, that only happens in the voice world when both parties are paying flat-rate. And that's not the case the ILECs are principally interested in, one presumes. -Bill