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Products and Services Revenue
3 Months Ended
Mar. 31, 2019
Revenue from Contract with Customer [Abstract]  
Products and Services Revenue
Products and Services Revenue

We are an integrated communications company engaged primarily in providing an array of communications services, including local voice, broadband, private line (including business data services), Ethernet, network access, information technology and other ancillary services. We strive to maintain our customer relationships by, among other things, bundling our service offerings to provide our customers with a complete offering of integrated communications services.

We categorize our products, services and revenue among the following six categories:
IP and Data Services, which include primarily VPN data networks, Ethernet, IP and other ancillary services;
Transport and Infrastructure, which include broadband, private line (including business data services) and other ancillary services;
Voice and Collaboration, which includes primarily local voice, including wholesale voice, and other ancillary services;
IT and Managed Services, which include information technology services and managed services, which may be purchased in conjunction with our other network services;
Regulatory Revenue, which consist of Universal Service Fund ("USF") and Connect America Fund ("CAF") support payments and other operating revenue. We receive federal support payments from both federal and state USF programs and from the federal CAF program. These support payments are government subsidies designed to reimburse us for various costs related to certain telecommunications services including the costs of deploying, maintaining and operating voice and broadband infrastructure in high-cost rural areas where we are not able to fully recover our costs from our customers; and
Affiliate Services, we provide to our affiliates, telecommunication services that we also provide to external customers. In addition, we provide to our affiliates computer system development and support services, network support and technical services.
From time to time, we may change the categorization of our products and services.

Our operating revenue for our products and services consisted of the following categories:
 
Three Months Ended March 31,
 
2019
 
2018
 
(Dollars in millions)
IP and Data Services
$
147

 
150

Transport and Infrastructure
715

 
744

Voice and Collaboration
422

 
467

IT and Managed Services
1

 
2

Regulatory Revenue
48

 
56

Affiliate Services
722

 
711

Total operating revenue
$
2,055

 
2,130



We recognize revenue in our consolidated statements of operations for certain USF surcharges and transaction taxes that we bill to our customers. Our consolidated statements of operations also reflect the offsetting expense for the amounts we remit to the government agencies. The total amount of such surcharges and transaction taxes that we included in revenue aggregated $30 million and $34 million for the three months ended March 31, 2019 and 2018, respectively. These USF surcharges are assigned to the products and services categories based on the underlying revenue. We also act as a collection agent for certain other USF and transaction taxes that we are required by government agencies to bill our customers, for which we do not record any revenue or expense because we only act as a pass-through agent.