Congressional, FCC Rural Calling Actions Mostly Welcomed; NTCA Cites 'Backsliding' Concern
Recent legislative and regulatory rural call completion moves drew largely high marks from an FCBA panel Tuesday. Industry panelists said the Improving Rural Call Quality and Reliability Act signed into law would improve transparency by mandating the FCC require intermediate providers to register and meet service quality standards. Some also praised an April 17 commission order and Further NPRM (text) to replace "covered" long-distance provider data reporting requirements with oversight of intermediate provider performance, and to launch a rulemaking on the new law (see 1804170025 and 1804180025). But a rural telco official voiced concern the FCC shift could invite greater rural calling problems, and was less optimistic certain regulatory and technology transitions would largely address the issue.
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FCC staff granted covered providers temporary relief from data reporting duties Tuesday to address a gap in the April 17 order's intent and implementation. The order said eliminating the reporting obligation would relieve providers of a May 1 quarterly deadline, but it won't take effect until 30 days after Federal Register publication. Asked by FCBA members about the gap, Alex Espinoza, a Wireline Bureau attorney, said the commission intends to clear up any ambiguity "soon." Minutes later, an audience member reported an item was released. The bureau gave covered providers a temporary waiver of rural calling reporting requirements until the effective date of the April 17 order.
The policymaker focus is a sign of "great progress" on rural calling issues that used to be ignored or blamed on RLECs, said Andy Brown, Inteliquent vice president-industry and client relations. Mike Romano, NTCA senior vice president-industry affairs and business development, lauded the new law's intermediate-carrier registration requirement as improving transparency. The registry will make it "much" clearer who's handling traffic, said Lynn Follansbee, USTelecom vice president-law and policy.
The FCC recognized that "least-cost routing" contributes to rural calling problems, Espinoza said. Matt Nodine, AT&T assistant vice president-federal regulatory, said ATIS best practices will solve many problems, and an FCC "safe harbor" would encourage more carriers to adopt them. AT&T doesn't use least-cost routing and limits long-distance calls to "two hops" between carriers, he said, noting he's a rural calling contact person. Brown said not using least-cost routing and limiting calls to two hops were key best practices. The two-hop limit "has helped quite a bit" for carriers that have adopted it, Romano said. Follansbee welcomed the removal of 2013 data reporting requirements that were "not helpful" and a "burden." AT&T doesn't anticipate problems complying with an FCC 180-day period for renegotiating intermediate provider contracts, Nodine said.
NTCA didn't necessarily oppose the reporting relief but wants more "incentives" for improved carrier performance, Romano said. The group unsuccessfully proposed requiring covered providers to comply with the best practices, or requiring them to report their intermediate provider monitoring procedures and certify compliance, he said. Without those safeguards, he said, there's a "risk of backsliding" to pre-2013 rural calling problems. He voiced concern that if the FCC eventually eliminates 2013 data recording and retention requirements, it won't have the information needed for proper enforcement when investigating alleged violations. Some audience members questioned the validity of certification requirements, saying they led to boilerplate filings, but Romano said requiring covered providers to file upfront their monitoring procedures at least once would still be helpful.
Nodine voiced optimism the problems would be ameliorated over time as the FCC completes its intercarrier compensation "transformation" (by driving charges down) and as industry completes the migration to IP-based networks. He noted telco and cable entities recently proposed that carriers engaged in "access stimulation" bear the cost of terminating switched transport (see 1804120063). Romano said those transitions could help, but IP isn't "magic pixie dust" and intercarrier compensation changes don't eliminate network costs, which are higher in rural areas.