Fiber BTC MEET YOUR BTC FIBER EMPLOYEES Billing and Revenue Assurance Department

— Maranda Keith, Manager

What’s the name of your department and its primary function?

It’s the billing and revenue assurance department. Our department is responsible for all billing functions within the company.

What role does your department play in the overall operations at BTC Fiber? Our department is responsible for all the billing for customer services, as well as billing interexchange carriers for use of our network. Almost all service orders that are done by BTC employees are routed to our department to be invoiced to customers.

Our department is also responsible for various federal reporting concerning revenues, sales and excise tax returns, and subscriber counts. We work with a private contractor to provide information for the annual telephone directories. We also process the annual allocation of the company’s margins to our members.

What information about your department would be helpful for members to know?

Telecommunications is a highly regulated industry. Many of the fees and taxes that you see on your invoice each month are mandated through various government agencies and tariffs. Billing works closely with customer service, engineering, central office and outside plant to process orders in a timely manner. Each department has specific duties to perform in order to complete each customer’s service request.

Recent regulations allow BTC to offer broadband-only services to our subscribers. Customers are no longer required to have telephone service in order to have broadband services. We work very closely with our local E911 departments to ensure that calls from our landline phones show the correct address of your location in case of emergencies.

Carrier access billing is a part of BTC Fiber’s revenue that many people are not aware of. Interexchange carriers, such as AT&T, Verizon, Qwest and Level 3, provide our customers with multiple options to call long distance. Federal guidelines require these carriers to pay BTC for use of our network. These carriers receive monthly invoices for their minutes of use on our network. Many businesses request direct data connections to their other locations outside of our network. Interexchange carriers provide a path from our network to the desired locations. Each month, we bill those carriers for connections based on tariff rates approved by the Federal Communications Commission.

Billing and Revenue Assurance Department

• Maranda Keith, 22 years

• Jacquelynn Wooden, 31 years

• Shaunda Youngblood, 5 years