Credits will be given to callers who used MCI's deeply discounted "dialaround" phone service now called 10-10-321 but got billed at the company's highest rate.
The agreement between MCI Communications Corp. and the Federal Communications Commission announced Monday extends beyond the 60 people who filed complaints to the agency and will cover people who were affected but didn't complain, the FCC said.A technical glitch in new switching equipment caused some of the dialaround calls to be billed at MCI's highest rate. The Federal Communications Commission, however, did not make a determination as to whether MCI was at fault.
The FCC also did not estimate how much money is at stake in overcharges.
MCI's dialaround service is operated through its subsidiary called Telecom USA.
Callers don't have to switch from their preferred long-distance carrier to use a dialaround long-distance service, which advertises cheap rates. Instead, they just begin dialing the access code to make long-distance calls. TelecomUSA advertises rates at roughly a 50 percent discount.
Some people who used MCI's dialaround service between October 1997 and June of this year could have been overcharged, the FCC said. The service had been called 10-321.
During that period, the switch didn't work properly and instead of routing calls to the dialaround service, they went to MCI, where they were billed at the highest rate because the callers were not listed in MCI's billing database.