Call Completion Draft NPRM Seeks Mandatory Data Collection

The NPRM seeks comment on the best way for carriers to track call rates and report on them on an ongoing basis, an FCC official said. Several intermediate carriers are involved in routing a call from origination to termination, but the NPRM is “putting the onus on the long-distance carrier” that holds itself out to the consumers, an FCC official said. “The responsibility falls to the carrier that’s advertising and holding itself out as a common carrier.” The commission hopes that originating IXCs might be able to ensure through their contracts and business relationships that the calls are being completed, officials said. Agency staff were also concerned that the intermediate carriers wouldn’t be as easy to reach, officials said. The larger carriers already keep the requested information, an official said, and one point of the NPRM is to ensure the smaller carriers do it too. The notice contemplates safe harbors, where smaller carriers that aren’t having issues -- and can certify there’s very little difference in call completion rate to rural versus urban areas -- won’t have to provide the requested information, an FCC official said. A bureau spokesman had no comment.

Usually, call completion rates are pretty comparable between urban and rural areas, FCC officials told us. If the gathered data shows a big drop off, the commission will know there’s a real problem, they said. That “would suggest that it’s not actually ringing on the other side,” one FCC official said. Not all carriers keep information in a way that allows the commission to determine where a failure has happened, agency officials said. By requiring carriers to collect the information and retain those records for a certain period of time, it will help the commission investigate where in the interexchange carrier chain the failure is, officials said. “We don’t know exactly” where the problem exists, an FCC official said, and neither might the originating carrier: An originating carrier looking at a 99.9 percent call completion rate may not realize that “those 0.1 percent of calls that are lost may all be rural calls."

There’s been some pushback from industry on whether unanswered calls are actually lost, and industry and government officials used the phrase “flurry of activity” to describe the ex parte action they expect in the coming days and weeks as telcos joust over the proper scope of the data collection. On Friday, during a meeting between Verizon and bureau officials on call completion, the telco said it would be “inappropriate” to treat as “not completed” calls that are “delivered but not answered by the customer” (http://xrl.us/bob6vo). “A uniform approach to call completion data and metrics for providers that use various technologies to deliver calls may create complexity and impose undue burdens on some providers,” Verizon said.

The NPRM also would prohibit a long-distance provider from giving a caller the “ringing” sound unless the call is actually connected, FCC and industry officials said. “Back when we all had PSTN [public switched telephone network] phones, that ring was actually generated by the switch in the central office of the person you were calling,” an FCC official said. These days, some carriers inject a false ringback tone so that “the customer doesn’t get upset, even though the phone on the other side isn’t actually ringing yet,” the official said. The proposed rules would put an end to that.

NTCA would “welcome a greater spotlight on this epidemic,” said Michael Romano, senior vice president of policy. “Rural telcos and the consumers they serve are tired of being ‘put on hold’ while this problem is examined for years on end. So even as a notice of proposed rulemaking will hopefully represent an important step toward solving this problem holistically, it remains essential to pair the further notice with swift and effective enforcement action that lets individual providers know that call failures won’t be tolerated even as the further notice proceeds."

The NPRM doesn’t have a timeline for when the data might be due, FCC and industry officials said. As of Thursday, FCC officials said none of the commissioners had voted on the rulemaking, but one official didn’t expect many edits from the eighth floor. Even once approved, it could take several months to seek comment and draft an order, and then several more months to get Office of Management and Budget approval under the Paperwork Reduction Act, said FCC officials. At that rate it could be autumn before the commission starts seeing data from this effort, officials said. Enforcement Bureau investigations of uncompleted calls are ongoing, and FCC officials said they hope whatever data’s collected will help the bureau find out where in the chain the problems are happening, and go after the right carriers.

Rural lawmakers generally lauded the commission’s forthcoming NPRM, in written statements to us. Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., sees it as a “step in the right direction,” he said. “In this day and age, it is unacceptable that calls to rural America are not being completed. This problem hurts small businesses and creates a concerning public safety issue. Although it’s frustrating that no enforcement action has been taken, I'm glad the Commission is looking at ways to supplement its current investigation. This represents a step in the right direction, and I'm hopeful it will help lead to the bad actors being held accountable.” Johnson was the lead author of the Dec. 3 letter urging the commission to take enforcement action against any parties found to be in violation of the commission’s February declaratory ruling (http://xrl.us/bn549b).

Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., who also signed the letter, views the potential FCC changes “favorably,” his spokesman said. “These would be positive steps and he is pleased that the FCC is looking to gather information to better enforce existing laws. But, Senator Tester’s concerns will continue until the problem is resolved.” Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., was pleased by the proposal. “Families and businesses in rural Minnesota have the same right to high-quality, reliable telephone service as everyone else,” he said. “Dropped calls and poor service quality often result in lost income for rural businesses, and many families rely on their landlines in case of emergency. I've been pushing the FCC to do everything they can to make sure that rural customers get the telephone service they're paying for, and I'm pleased they are taking steps to solve this problem.”

House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., is monitoring call completion issues, he said in an interview. “Whether it is that or USF or the TracPhones, those Lifeline phones, those are all issues that are brewing.”