FCC Takes Additional Steps to Combat Rural Call Completion Problems

Using new authority granted by Congress, the Federal Communications Commission took additional steps to combat the persistent problem of long-distance calls placed to rural America failing to reach their destination. Under the Improving Call Quality and Reliability (RCC) Act of 2017 and rules set by the FCC in 2018, “intermediate providers” must register with the FCC, and certain carriers that originate long-distance calls, called “covered providers,” may not hand off calls to an unregistered intermediate provider. The Report and Order adopted 3/15 continues the FCC’s implementation of the RCC Act and sets clear, enforceable service quality standards for intermediate providers to help ensure that calls to all Americans are in fact completed. Specifically, intermediate providers will now be required to:

1. Take steps reasonably calculated to ensure that all calls they handle are delivered to their destination
2. When routing calls to rural areas, monitor the performance of any other intermediate providers with which they directly contract, and based on the results of that monitoring, take steps to address any performance problems with those providers
3. Ensure that any intermediate providers to which they hand off calls are registered

Intermediate providers that fail to abide by these standards are subject to fines from the FCC. The FCC can also remove non-compliant providers from its registry, which would make those providers ineligible for use by covered providers and other intermediate providers in completing calls.