 
"By taking over the billing and customer service issues that are common with multiple telecom vendors...ICM has been able to take the stress out of our communications issues so we can concentrate on the job at hand. In addition, ICM was able to reduce our telecom costs significantly."
Director of IT
Christa Construction
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August 8, 1999
City School get $500,000 back —
Frontier Corp settles with the district in a dispute over overcharged telephone calls
By Staff Writer Erika Rosenberg, Democrat and Chronicle
Frontier Corp will pay the Rochester School District $500,000 to settle a billing dispute that dates back eight years. The district said it was overcharged for calls between schools over a six-year period beginning in 1990. The company acknowledged problems but said some extra charges were caused by district staff members.
The company and school district used a mediation process to settle their differences and agree on a figure. The settlement was announced Thursday night.
Frontier agreed to pay the district $375,000 by June 30, 1999, and $200,000 by June 30, 2000. The company will also reduce the rate it charges the district by $25,000 by June 30, 2000, said Randall Simonetti, Frontier vice president for communications.
The dispute centered on billing for Frontier's Centrex system, which institutions use to make internal calls easier and cheaper. Callers dial four digits instead of seven and do not pay for a local call. Over the six-year period, the district was charged the cost of a local call for some internal calls.
Sometimes, this was because the Centrex system was overburdened. Other times, it was because school staff members dialed the full, seven-digit phone numbers, Simonetti said yesterday. The district also challenged some charges for lines, he said.
"We felt we were owed a fair amount of money", said district counsel Louis Keula. Early estimates of what the company owed were more than $1 million, Simonetti said. "Both sides had to...make some changes in their original position", he said.
The settlement was uncommon because of both the payment's size and the needed mediation to resolve the problem, Simonetti said. A mediator from the state Public Service Commission helped the two sides come to an agreement.
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