Sprint told the FCC it opposed AT&T’s prepaid calling card petiti...

does, that a prepaid calling card, marketed and sold for the sole purpose of making telephone calls, can be turned into an ‘information’ or ‘enhanced’ service by injecting a commercial message during call set-up.” This message is one that “consumers don’t ask to hear and that only services the purpose of delaying connections to the parties they are calling,” Sprint said. The letter signed by Sprint Vp Richard Juhnke said AT&T’s decision not to pay into the universal service fund (USF) and access charges because it deemed the prepaid calls an information service resulted in customers of other carriers having to make up the USF contributions and LECs being denied the access charges “to which they are lawfully entitled.” If other carriers followed the same logic, the USF would suffer even further, Sprint said. For example, the letter said, Sprint transmits time-of-day information for wireless customers and could program its wireline switches “to interject some irrelevant piece of information [such as] the temperature in downtown Djakarta.” Using AT&T’s argument, “Sprint could legitimately cease all future USF contributions on both wireless and [with the switching change] direct-dialed voice services” and could seek refunds of all prior wireless-related contributions as well.”