Operator service access and pay telephone compensation--Federal Communications Commission. Final rule; order on...

Five petitions for reconsideration or clarification were filed regarding Policies and Rules Concerning Operator Service Access and Pay Telephone Compensation, CC Docket No. 91-35: Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rule Making, 6 FCC Rcd 4736, 56 FR 40,793 (1991) (hereinafter Report and Order), in which the Commission adopted policies and rules concerning consumer access to operator service providers (OSPs) and compensation for competitive public payphone owners for calls not utilizing their presubscribed OSPs. In response to the petitions, the Commission adopted an Order on Reconsideration (hereinafter Order) in which it reaffirmed that: (1) Call aggregators must allow consumers to use equal access ("10XXX") codes according to the schedule described in the original Report and Order, with certain clarifications; (2) all OSPs, except those exempted in the Order, must establish an 800 or 950 access number within six months of the effective date of the previously adopted rules; and (3) calls initiated with an 800 number that does not serve as an OSP's access code are not within the scope of the statutory provision that required the Commission to consider payphone compensation. In addition, the Commission granted the request to order local exchange carriers (LECs) to offer blocking and screening services designed to control potentially fraudulent 10XXX calling. The Commission deferred certain unblocking deadlines pending the deployment of the required LEC services.