Immediate FCC, State Action on Call Completion Trouble Urged at NARUC Panel
LOS ANGELES -- There’s no time to lose in addressing issues with call completion because public safety, homeland security and economic well-being in rural America are threatened, said panelists at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners meeting. Meanwhile, no commitments were made during Chairman Julius Genachowski’s meeting with the USF Federal/State Joint Board and the NARUC Telecom Committee.
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The meeting (CD July 18 p8) was very “cordial” lasting much longer than anticipated, with the chairman listening but “understandably reluctant to make commitments” while he and his staff are still receiving input from interested parties, James Cawley, Pennsylvania Utility Commissioner and chair of the USF Joint Board, told us.
Customers in some 35 states are reporting increasing difficulty receiving long-distance calls, said Robert Gnapp, director of demand assurance and network analysis at the National Exchange Carrier Association. Other issues include unusually long call setup, poor call quality, misleading call intercepts and Caller ID, he said. The suspected causes include routing loops, improper network management or setup, originating carriers routing calls to least-cost routing providers whose contracts stipulate they will not complete calls to certain areas, he said. Additionally, some nomadic VoIP providers are unwilling to terminate calls to certain areas. Unfortunately, resolution is out of the RLEC’s direct control because most calls never reach RLEC’s networks, he said. Originating providers cooperated with the RLECs to resolve the problem only about half of the time, he said. RLECs encourage the calling party to file trouble reports directly with the originating carrier, he said.
Reports of call termination problems in many jurisdictions started to pop up in 2010, said Mike Romano, senior vice president of NTCA. Issues were largely being “triaged piecemeal” by individual carriers and tandem providers, he said. The problems are threatening commerce, public safety and consumers’ ability to access and use a reliable network, he said. The FCC should affirm the duty of all providers to route calls properly for completion regardless of the technology used, he said. The agency should affirm the duty of providers to supply and pass accurate and complete Caller ID for the actual customer who originates the call, he said. States should also do the same for calls within their jurisdictions, he said. Though it’s still uncertain what jurisdiction states have on call completion issues, having workshops and investigations would be a good start, he said. “We can’t afford to take time to examine this or let industry debate the problem ad nauseum, he said. Additionally, call completion is a consumer service issue that should be addressed separately from Intercarrier Compensation, he said.
Poor voice quality of answered calls appears more widespread in Oregon, said Malia Brock, a staffer with the Oregon Public Utility Commission. The state commission recently initiated an investigation on call completion issues. Rick Ratliff, a counsel with Sprint Nextel, said there’s a difference in bad actors and responsible least-cost routing, which maximizes investments.