With all the attention given to net neutrality lately, the FCC’s efforts to resolve the issues end user customers have calling rural areas, has been almost completely ignored. However, my discussions with FCC personnel suggest the Commission is very serious about this issue, and they are eager to make an example of a carrier with a poor rural call completion record. Thus, it is wise for all carriers to strictly comply with the Commission’s call completion requirements.  

Speaking of those requirements, on November 13, 2014, the Commission released an Order on Reconsideration (Reconsideration Order) in Docket 13-39, the Rural Call Completion Order. In the Reconsideration Order, the Commission explains that it will no longer require call providers to collect and report data for certain intraLATA toll calls to ease their collection burden. Before we go into more detail on this change, however, it is worth reviewing the Commission’s original call completion requirements.      

In its Call Completion Order, the Commission, responding to concerns that many calls could not be successfully completed to rural areas, began requiring certain call providers to record, retain, and report rural call completion data. Call providers were defined as carriers that make the initial long-distance call path choice for more than 100,000 domestic retail subscriber lines, counting the total of all business and residential fixed subscriber lines and mobile phones and aggregated over all of the providers’ affiliates. 

The Commission called these carriers “covered providers.” These covered providers are required to record and retain specific information about each call attempt to a rural LEC company number (OCN) from subscriber lines for which the providers make the initial long distance call path choice. This information must be stored in a readily retrievable form and must include the six most recent complete calendar months.

Covered providers must submit to the Commission, on a quarterly schedule, a certified report containing information on long-distance call attempts from subscriber lines for which the covered providers make the initial call path choice. The reports must separate out call attempts by month.

Covered providers are required to record and retain the following information for each long-distance call attempt to rural ILECs by OCN: calling party number; called party number; signaling code information; date; time of day; whether the call is handed off to an intermediate provider and, if so, which intermediate provider; whether the call is interstate; and whether the call attempt was answered.

Five Petitions for Reconsideration of the Order were filed. The Commission rejected four of them: Rejected petitions filed by CompTel and Sprint are noteworthy.

CompTel suggested that the Commission change its definition of a covered provider to include only very large LECs, so fewer carriers are forced to collect burdensome call completion data. It also argued that the Commission should use the number of actual subscribers rather than subscriber lines to determine which companies must comply with the Order. 

However, the Commission rejected this, making clear that “[e]xcepting providers on the basis of subscriber lines, rather than subscribers, is reasonably designed to minimize burdens on smaller providers without compromising the effectiveness of the rules.” Moreover, “the 100,000 subscriber-line threshold should capture as much as 95 percent of all callers,” and the appropriate LECs. 

Sprint used its Petition to dispute the Commission’s decision to use call completion data as the basis for subsequent enforcement action. Sprint claimed that the Commission had not provided any guidance as to what behaviors by covered carriers are unreasonable, or what performance results could trigger enforcement action. To remedy this, Sprint suggested that the Commission publish a list of call completion practices it deems acceptable. 

The Commission rejected Sprint’s assertions. It explained that call completion data will simply aid it in any enforcement decision. Furthermore, carriers will have ample opportunity to provide exculpatory evidence.  The Commission also stated that it already defined unacceptable call completion practices, noting that carriers are prohibited from blocking, choking, reducing, or restricting traffic in any way, including to avoid termination charges,

The only actual change made to the Call Completion Order was triggered by the joint Petition filed by USTelecom and ITTA. 

The original call completion requirements were applicable originally to both intraLATA toll traffic and interLATA traffic carried on the covered provider’s own network and handed off directly by the originating provider to the terminating LEC. The Commission initially decided to include intraLATA toll traffic because “because data on this traffic would provide an important benchmark for issue-free performance, especially “where a provider may be using both on-net and off-net routes to deliver calls to the same terminating provider.”

The joint Petitioners claim, however, that much of the intraLATA call data is not currently collected by smaller LECs and it would cost over $100 million and take 18-24 months for them to modify their systems to enable this data collection. They argue that any benefit gained from collected data on intraLATA calls is dwarfed by the cost considerations. The Commission agrees:  

[W]e modify rules adopted in the Order so that the record keeping, retention, and reporting requirements adopted in the Order do not apply to a limited subset of calls: intraLATA toll calls that are carried entirely over the covered provider’s network, and intraLATA toll calls that are handed off by the covered provider directly to the terminating local exchange carrier (LEC) or to the tandem that the terminating LEC’s end office subtends. The decision to grant reconsideration reflects a focused analysis of the costs of applying the rules to this limited set of traffic, the fact that this traffic represents a small portion of total toll traffic, and the modest incremental benefit that such data would likely yield (Reconsideration Order at para. 2).

As we noted, this is a very serious issue for the Commission. It is also an issue that is important to state commissioners who take most of the heat when rural customers cannot receive calls. Thus, it is almost a certainty that the first carrier who doesn’t comply with call completion requirements, or worse, attempts shenanigans with the data, will find it made a costly example to others.

By Andrew Regitsky, CCMI

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