Level 3, FCC Ink Rural-Call Consent Decree

The FCC and Level 3 Communications resolved their problems that centered on rural call completion. Level 3 has agreed to meet mandated call-completion standards and to provide “extensive records” to the commission; it also will make a $975,000 voluntary contribution to the U.S. Treasury, with additional $1 million payments in the future if it misses specified quarterly benchmarks. Parts of the FCC consent decree oblige the operator to complete long-distance calls to rural ILECs at a rate within 5 percent of that in non-rural areas during a two-year period; and to develop scorecards for intermediate providers used by Level 3 uses to route calls, assessing their performance in the areas of post-dial delay in connecting calls, network failure and call-completion rates.