Rural Call Completion

The Federal Communications Commission is seeking comment on rules to help address problems in the completion of long-distance telephone calls to rural customers. Retail long-distance providers, such as wireless providers, cable companies, interexchange carriers (IXCs), local exchange carriers (LECs), and providers of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services, often employ intermediate providers to carry long-distance calls to their destination. Some of these intermediate providers offering wholesale call delivery services may be failing to deliver a significant number of calls to rural telephone company customers, and evidence indicates that the retail long-distance providers may not be adequately examining the resultant rural call completion performance.