Comment by wayzel

When VOIP and other communication services started to sprout in the 1990s the FCC let them coast without taxation for about a decade. They then reclassified all such services as common carriers so that they could be taxed as such. Common carriers must pay into various tax funds such as LNP (which funds citizens' rights to port their phone numbers between carriers), NANPA (which maintains the North American Numbering scheme), and USF (which subsidizes telephony buildout or services to areas that the private market would otherwise ignore). Most consumers see these as various charges as a roughly 20% up-charge on their bill.