FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMI SSION 
W ASH INGTON 
OF'f'IC!! Of' 
THE CtiAIRMAN 
The Honorable Tim Johnson 
United States Senate 
136 Hart Senate Office Building 
Washington, D.C. 20510 
Dear Senator Johnson: 
November 4, 2014 
Thank you for your letter regarding call completion issues. In your letter, you urge the 
Commission promptly to submit the necessary Paperwork Reduction Act request to the Office of 
Management and Budget (OMB) regarding the Rural Call Completion Report and Order and 
Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, and you request a timeline for submitting the rules for 
fmal approval and implementing the rules once approval has been granted. Your views are very 
important and will be included in the record of the proceeding and considered as part of the 
Commission ' s review. 
As you know, the consequences of call completion and service quality problems can be 
dire, impacting businesses, families, and public safety. The Commission is committed to 
ensuring reliable telephone service in rural America and has been attacking this problem on 
multiple fronts. In October 2013, the Commission adopted new rules governing the delivery of 
long-distance calls to rural areas, including prohibiting false ring signaling. The new rules 
include data retention and call completion performance reporting requirements, which will help 
target our enforcement efforts. The rule prohibiting false ring signaling is already in effect. The 
record retention, and call completion performance reporting requirements will need OMB 
approval before going into effect. 
Since we issued the Rural Call Completion Order, but before we submitted it to OMB for 
approval, we received several petitions to reconsider those rules. Those petitions, if granted, 
would affect the submission to OMB. 1 have circulated an Order to my fellow Commissioners to 
address all the pending reconsideration petitions so that we can move forward to implement these 
important rules. I have directed Commission staff to be prepared to submit the necessary 
documentation to OMB as soon as the reconsideration Order is adopted. 
As you note, the Commission also has taken enforcement actions in this area. In addition 
to the Consent Decree entered into with Level 3 in 20 13 ($97 5,000), the Enforcement Bureau 
earlier this year negotiated consent decrees with two major long distance providers: Windstream 
Corporation ($2.5 million) and Matrix Telecom ($875,000). We will continue to investigate the 
call completion practices of other voice communications providers, enforce our rules, and 
evaluate whether any additional measures are appropriate to ensure reliable telephone service in 
rural America. 
Page 2- The Honorable Tim Johnson 
I appreciate your interest in this matter. Please let me know ifl can be of any further 
assistance. 
Sincerely, 
Tom Wheeler