As reported previously, See the Regulatory Mix dated March 18, 2014, South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson introduced legislation intended to build upon the FCC’s rural call completion rules.
The text of #S2125, the Public Safety and Economic Security Communications Act, has just been released.
Under the legislation as introduced, an intermediate provider [1] that:
- offers the capability to transmit covered voice communications [2] from one destination to another; and
- charges any rate to any other entity (including an affiliated entity) for such transmission
would be required to register with the FCC and comply with the service quality standards to be developed by the FCC.
The FCC would have to establish a registry to record the registrations and adopt service quality standards no later than 180 days after enactment of the law. The registry would have to be publicly available on the FCC’s website.
Any entity that qualifies as a covered provider [3] under the FCC’s rural call completion rules would be prohibited from using an intermediate provider to transmit covered voice communications unless the intermediate provider was registered with the FCC. The law would apply regardless of the format by which any communication or service was provided, the protocol or format by which the transmission was achieved, or the regulatory classification of the communication or service.
The bill was referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
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[1] Intermediate provider means any entity that—(A) carries or processes traffic that is generated from the placement of a call from a connection using a North American Numbering Plan resource or a call placed to a connection using such a numbering resource; and (B) does not itself originate or terminate such traffic in the context of the carriage or processing.
[2] Covered voice communication means a voice communication (including any related signaling information) that is generated—(A) from the placement of a call from a connection using a North American Numbering Plan resource or a call placed to a connection using such a numbering resource; and (B) through any service provided by a covered provider.
[3] Covered provider means a provider of long-distance voice service that makes the initial long-distance call path choice for more than 100,000 domestic retail subscriber lines, counting the total of all business and residential fixed subscriber lines and mobile phones and aggregated over all of the providers’ affiliates. A covered provider may be a local exchange carrier as defined in §64.4001(e), an interexchange carrier as defined in §64.4001(d), a provider of commercial mobile radio service as defined in §20.3 of this chapter, a provider of interconnected voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service as defined in 47 U.S.C. 153(25), or a provider of non-interconnected VoIP service as defined in 47 U.S.C. 153(36) to the extent such a provider offers the capability to place calls to the public switched telephone network.
