Oregon regulators will investigate phone connection problems in rural areas

Oregon's rural phone companies say their customers are having increasing trouble receiving long-distance calls, with calls and faxes failing to go through. State regulators announced that they will investigate the issue, which the rural companies attribute to they way some other carriers route long-distance calls.

The rural companies say it's costing them money, and harming their customers' ability to communicate. "There's a lot of mom-and-pop businesses that rely on long-distance and faxes to get their orders," said Bob Valdez, spokesman for the Oregon Public Utility Commission. Big phone companies seek to contain expenses for long-distance calls with a practice called "least-cost routing" -- sending a long-distance call over the cheapest network. Local companies in Oregon complain that some carriers are using Internet technology to cut the cost of carrying the call and dodge local fees -- sometimes at the expense of call quality or connections.