Qwest Communications will give the Oregon University System $450,000 in May for overbilling and “shortchanging” schools that use an elaborate telephone service to consolidate phone lines.
Qwest, a multimedia network and telephone company, originally gave a $60,000 refund to the University in September 2000 because the company overbilled the school for using a multiple-line circuit, ISDN PRI. But $60,000 was well short of the refund estimate Qwest marketers had calculated for OUS representatives by phone just months before the refunds were issued, said Dave Barta, manager of telecommunications services for the University of Oregon.
“We caught this because we were being vigilant,” Barta said. “We have learned over the years that big corporations make mistakes, and that’s really all this was – boneheaded, but not evil.”
The University will use its share of the additional refund, about $72,000, to bolster telephone service and the campus network facility, Barta said. The refund also covers OUS schools that weren’t compensated after they also were overbilled for using ISDN PRI circuits, including Portland State University, Oregon State University and Oregon Health & Science University. By May, Qwest will have issued $510,000 in refunds to OUS schools.
Qwest spokeswoman Mary Healy said the company didn’t miscalculate refunds for ISDN PRI customers – the company adhered to Federal Communications Commission guidelines.
“Basically, we used methodology for determining basic lines, and others,” Healy said. “We submitted that to the PUC, and PUC accepted it. So we started making refunds. But some ISDN PRI customers disagreed with our methodology for determining the rate of refunds.”
Those customers included Barta and two other OUS telecommunications directors, Tim Johnston and Shay Dakan. They told the association that represents OUS in its use of large telephone services that Qwest wasn’t counting ISDN PRI lines correctly. ISDN PRI circuits enable customers to integrate the equivalent of 23 analog lines into one digital line that transmits voice and data information. Qwest was suggesting a refund of $1,710.90 for each ISDN PRI device, according to case records. But the directors said the refund should be $7,700 per ISDN PRI.
“We filed testimony very precisely describing how the calculations should be made and describing ISDN PRI lines,” said Lisa Rackner, a Portland attorney for Ater Wynne LLP who represented the Telecommunications Ratepayers Association for Cost-based and Equitable Rates, or TRACER, in the case. “Both PUC and Qwest agreed that was right.”
TRACER represents users of large telephone services in Oregon and intervenes in PUC proceedings when its customers are affected by rate changes. The OUS refund, agreed to by Qwest and PUC on Oct. 12, 2001, is about 70 percent of what TRACER wanted from Qwest, Barta said. But he said it is a victory nonetheless.
“It was a long fight, and it feels like the good guys actually won one,” he said. “That doesn’t happen often in this arena.”
E-mail reporter Eric Martin at ericmartin @dailyemerald.com