Verizon Rural Call Completion Hotline Launched in FCC Compliance Plan

Rural telecommunications companies that have problems with calls not going through to their customers from Verizon customers now have a hot line to call at Verizon. In addition, Verizon plans to award $30,000 to $50,000 for an academic study on methods to determine and resolve rural call completion problems in real time. Both initiatives were discussed at a rural call completion workshop that Verizon conducted in April. The hotline, academic study, and workshop all were conditions of a rural call completion compliance plan that Verizon reached with the Federal Communications Commission, which in January said the company failed to investigate evidence of low call answer rates to 26 different rural areas. The settlement included $2 million in fines and $3 million for the compliance plan. Rural carriers have complained for years about calls not going through to their customers. As participants explained in Verizon’s workshop, this sometimes occurs because one of multiple carriers handling the call wants to avoid paying per-minute access charges to the terminating carrier. Those charges are higher in rural areas to help cover the higher costs of delivering service in those areas.