Problems Persist, but Commenters Say FCC Rural Call Completion Rules Are Working

Call competition problems are diminishing but haven’t gone away, NTCA told the FCC in comments posted Friday. Others said the rules are working, with some limited complaints. The Wireline Bureau said in September the 2018 rules were effective but asked for comment (see 2009140056). They were due Thursday in docket 13-39. Other commenters had a more positive take.

Members “continue to receive rural call completion complaints on a monthly or weekly basis, with occasional spikes that lead to daily complaints,” NTCA said. Providers “spend a considerable amount of time working with the customers to identify originating providers and troubleshoot the issues,” the group said. NTCA advised: “Continue to enforce the rules in place and consider when enhanced enforcement efforts against bad actors might be necessary and warranted to provide all providers in a call path with appropriate incentives to ensure that calls complete.”

Rural LECS continue to have problems, most often “routing issues related to the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) database that routes calls between IP addresses,” USTelecom said. When calls were all routed using signaling system 7 time division multiplexing technology, “there was a way to tell when a call was dropped and why,” the group said: “However, with the move to IP-based technologies there are occasional issues with the translation between databases which affect routing. This can cause attempted calls on a particular route to get ‘lost in translation’ leading to calls getting dropped, which is … a problem that RLECs have been able to resolve on an ad hoc basis.” USTelecom said the FCC’s current rules are “more effective in combating rural call completion issues and less burdensome than the previous recording, retention and reporting rules.”

“The Commission’s reforms and the dearth of genuine rural call completion complaints confirm that the Commission was correct to eliminate the rules requiring collection and retention of extensive call completion data,” Verizon commented. When problems occur, Verizon said it “works with the relevant intermediate and terminating carriers to investigate the issue and report the results of that investigation and any remedial actions to the Commission.”

Major members confirm the current approach is working, NCTA said. “Our top three largest member companies report a combined total of 4 rural call complaints received from the Rural Call Completion Task Force in 2020,” the group said. “Given that these companies have completed more than 100 million calls to rural areas in the same time frame, it is clear that the efforts they are taking to address call completion issues are working very well.”

“The Commission’s most recent reforms, including elimination of unnecessary reporting and retention requirements, have reduced unnecessary burdens on providers without undermining the improvements in rural call completion,” CTIA said. “Continue this effective, iterative review process and consider whether certain other rural call competition rules continue to support the Commission’s goals without imposing unnecessary burdens on voice service providers.”