47 U.S.C. § 276 — Provision of payphone service

(a) Nondiscrimination safeguards — Once the FCC's rules under subsection (b) take effect, a Bell operating company that provides payphone service (1) may not subsidize that service, directly or indirectly, from its telephone exchange service or exchange access revenue; and (2) may not prefer or discriminate in favor of its own payphone service. (b) Regulations — (1) Contents of regulations: within 9 months of February 8, 1996, the Commission had to take all necessary action to issue rules that (A) set up a compensation plan making sure every payphone service provider is fairly paid, with just and reasonable rates and charges, for completed intrastate and interstate calls using their payphone — except emergency calls and telecommunications relay service calls for hearing-disabled callers aren't subject to this compensation; (B) end the old carrier access-charge payphone payments and all intrastate and interstate payphone subsidies from basic exchange and exchange-access revenue that existed on February 8, 1996, replacing them with the new compensation plan; (C) set nonstructural safeguards for Bell operating company payphone service to carry out subsection (a)(1) and (2), at least as strong as those adopted in the earlier Computer Inquiry-III proceeding; (D) give Bell operating company payphone providers the same right independent payphone providers have to negotiate with the location owner over selecting and contracting with the carriers that carry interLATA (long-distance) calls from their payphones — unless the Commission decides in the rulemaking that this isn't in the public interest; and (E) give every payphone service provider the right to negotiate with the location owner over selecting and contracting with the carriers that carry intraLATA calls from their payphones. (2) Public interest telephones — In this rulemaking, the Commission had to decide whether "public interest" payphones — placed for public health, safety, and welfare where there'd otherwise be no payphone — should be kept, and if so, make sure they are fairly and equitably supported. (3) Existing contracts — Nothing in this section affects existing contracts between location owners and payphone service providers, or interLATA or intraLATA carriers, that were already in force on February 8, 1996. (c) State preemption — Where a state's requirements conflict with the Commission's regulations under this section, the Commission's regulations preempt (override) the state's requirements. (d) "Payphone service" defined — This means providing public or semi-public pay telephones, providing inmate telephone service and certain advanced communications services (described in section 153(1)(A), (B), (D), and (E)) in correctional institutions, and any services that go along with those.