WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Angus King (I-Maine) announced today that he has cosponsored the Improving Rural Call Quality and Reliability Act, bipartisan legislation aimed at improving rural communications and addressing call completion.

Today, persistent dropped calls in rural communities across the country are creating major inconveniences for families, hurting businesses, and even threatening public safety. A 2012 test call project found that nearly one in five calls placed to rural areas were delayed, of poor quality, or rendered incomplete. The Improving Rural Call Quality and Reliability Act, which is sponsored by Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), John Thune (R-S.D.), and Jon Tester (D-Mont.), would help correct long-standing problems with call completion failures faced by rural telecom customers to help ensure businesses, families, and emergency responders can count on phone calls being completed.

“In an ever-interconnected world, reliable, quality phone service is a necessity for families and businesses in rural Maine – and in the case of emergencies, it can even mean the difference between life and death,” Senator King said. “But today, there are still too many people in rural areas of Maine struggling to successfully place and receive calls, let alone not have them dropped. If we want to help rural communities grow in the future, we need to improve telecommunications and ensure that families and businesses have the tools they need to be able to call rural Maine home.”

More specifically, the Improving Rural Call Quality and Reliability Act would create a registry of intermediate providers – which are third-party companies that connect long distance calls between large, national providers and smaller, local providers – and require the FCC to establish service quality standards. The bill would also prohibit telephone carriers from using an intermediate provider that has not been registered. These measures would create greater accountability for intermediate providers and lead to a more efficient and effective delivery of long distance calls.

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