Viodi has been following this story for a number of months about call blocking and service disruption/degradation for conference calling services of independent telcos in Iowa. Over a dozen conference providers and rural telcos, including Arvig Communications Systems, Interstate 35 Telephone Company and Superior Telephone Cooperative and have formed a coalition – The Coalition for Network Neutrality – to combat what they describe as bullying tactics (non-payments, call-blocking) by larger carriers such as Verizon, AT&T, Qwest and Embarq. This is battle is getting more heated and the divide between small and large telco operator seems to be widening with every issue of the Viodi View.

Even USA Today is getting in on the reporting at:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2007-05-09-sprint-rural_N.htm?POE=click-refer

I had a chance to speak with Ron Laudner of Farmers Telephone, Josh Nelson of Great Lakes Telephone and Dave Erickson of FreeConferenceCall.com last week. They spent the latter part of last week lobbying the FCC to help them bring AT&T and the other large carriers to the table to discuss the issue that these carriers have with these conference call providers.

Call blocking, reported in an earlier issue of the Viodi View, no longer seems to be occurring with these service providers. These independent telcos are concerned about something much harder to quantify. They are concerned about the degradation of the Iowa telephone network due to carriers routing it via more congested routes. They have noticed things such as long call set-up times (up to 30 seconds) that is impacting Iowa telephone traffic beyond just their conference calling services.

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/070411/20070411005807.html?.v=1

suggesting that the blocking is negatively affecting non-profits. As a result, Independent telcos and conferencing companies will present their position to the FCC next week, April 18th to 20th.

Cingular and Qwest Are No Longer Blocking Your Calls!

Based on what Cingular’s Office of the President describes as “an overwhelming response from customers”, they have ceased blocking calls to our service. Qwest has also stopped blocking. This is all due to the loyal support you have shown FreeConference by protesting these carriers’ actions directly. Over 4,000 of you responded to our last note and went directly to the FCC site to register a complaint!

As reported in the LA Times, the FCC has said that ALL call blocking actions will cease until they can permanently resolve these service issues with AT&T/Cingular, Qwest, and Sprint.

Unfortunately, Sprint is still trying to disrupt a few of your conference calls, while hiding behind claims of congestion and busy signals. If you have a story of customer service runarounds with Sprint, please contact us and/or the FCC and remind them that not all carriers have stopped abusing their customers…..

http://www.viodi.com/newsletter/050301/article1.htm

The Madison River case is mentioned about half way down the page. This article was written at VON 2005 in the Michael Powell FCC era. The four Internet Freedoms are mentioned in this article.

It’s simple. When you and I are in the normal world (ie: when even telecom execs don’t have to be apologists for the companies they work for), we assume that when we make telephone calls, the calls should go through. Just because the call is going ‘over the top’ shouldn’t disqualify it from being connected.

Now that the issue is being raised again, it should definitely become part of the Net Neutrality debate. But then again, don’t hold your breath. It may be that nothing will happen until after Jan 20 2009 (when three of the FCC’s five commissioners may be Democrats).