What Are 'Intermediate Providers' in the Rural Call Completion World?

Posted by Ken Babcock on Jun 19, 2018 10:25:18 AM

The Improving Rural Call Quality and Reliability Act of 2017 (“RCC Act”) was signed into law by President Trump on February 26, 2018.

The primary thrust of the Act was designed to focus attention on the quality and reliability of communication services provided to rural areas of the United States by entities referred to as Intermediate Providers.

The new law defines Intermediate Providers as follows:

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Topics: Regulatory, Rural Call Completion, FCC

FCC Strengthens Rural Call Completion Rules & Enforcement

Posted by Ken Babcock on May 18, 2018 11:36:26 AM

*** Ken Babcock will be hosting a free webinar on the new rules and impacts of the Rural Call Completion order on Wednesday, May 23, 2018 at 1 PM EST.  Click Here to sign up for the webinar ***

Changes are here for Rural Call Completion reporting and compliance.  The good news is that the FCC has ruled in FCC18-45 that, effective immediately, Covered Providers no longer must submit FCC 480 – Rural Call Completion Reports to the FCC on a quarterly basis. Thus, the report that was due May 15, 2018 covering the 1st Quarter, 2018 does not have to be submitted.

However, there are new and increased FCC regulations as spelled out in the Second Rural Completion Order that was published in the Federal Register on May 10, 2018 and that goes into effect on June 11, 2018.  Covered Providers, as defined in the previous Rural Call Completion Report regime, must now implement an internal contract management and monitoring process that is far more stringent than anything experienced previously.

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Topics: Regulatory, Rural Call Completion, FCC

Is Safe Harbor Safe Enough for Rural Call Completion?

Posted by Ken Babcock on Nov 15, 2017 1:04:48 PM

The FCC is currently struggling mightily to arrive at a fair and equitable solution to the need to promote uniform quality of telecommunications for both large urban centers and very small rural areas of the United States.

The FCC fully recognizes that the existing Rural Call Completion reporting requirements are not capable of providing a reliable measurement of the “of how answer and call completion rates differed for various small non-rural carriers compared to the overall rate provided to larger non-rural carriers in total. “

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Topics: Telecom Data Analytics, Regulatory, Rural Call Completion

Is There a Life After Rural Call Completion Reports?

Posted by Ken Babcock on Oct 5, 2017 10:10:47 AM

Over the last two years, the FCC has been in the process of determining whether it still makes sense to have telecom service providers collect and report on call answer and completion rates on long distance domestic calls that were handed-off to Interexchange Carriers who provided routing, transport and completion functions for the calls made to customers of a NECA-provided list of small ILECs as well as to the much larger non-rural local exchange service providers in aggregate.

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Topics: Telecom Data Analytics, Rural Call Completion

Why Telcos Should Care About Big Data - Chalk Talk

Posted by Peter Mueller on Jan 22, 2014 2:04:00 PM

In this episode of ATS Chalk Talk, COO Peter Mueller looks at the technical and economic rationale for having telcos embrace the public cloud. A brief explanation of MapReduce and Amazon Web Services are presented from the vantage point of sifting through Call Detail Records (CDRs).

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Topics: Telecom Data Analytics, MapReduce, Big Data, Rural Call Completion, Chalk Talk

Rural Call Completion - Chalk Talk

Posted by Ken Babcock on Jan 14, 2014 10:03:00 AM

In this episode of ATS Chalk Talk, Ken Babcock, VP of Regulatory Services, discusses the FCC’s recent order on Rural Call Completion (FCC 13-135). The interview covers:

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Topics: Rural Call Completion, Chalk Talk