The FCC is seeking unfairly to make Verizon reimburse ’several mi...

“excellent” record of meeting an FCC requirement that TRS providers answer 85% of IP relay calls within 10 sec., the company said in a July 31 filing. The few delays arose from factors beyond Verizon’s control, such as fraudulent calls and natural disasters, it said. Bogus calls “cause unpredictable spikes in call volumes… and therefore make it difficult to staff effectively,” Verizon said: “Because these fraudulent calls often last longer than legitimate calls, they tie up staff resources and require additional time-consuming steps for communications assistants and their supervisors.” And tornados, power outages and fiber cuts affect service speed without warning, Verizon said. The FCC never has sought retroactive repayment of TRS funding, Verizon said. It asked the FCC to issue a declaratory ruling that the Commission “lacks authority to impose such a retrospective penalty” or alternatively give Verizon a waiver for the days it ran over the 10 sec. because Verizon’s record overall was so good. The TRS rules “nowhere purport to impose an automatic penalty in the form of forfeiting the compensation that is owed where the observed speed of answer for an individual day varies from the benchmark,” Verizon said. Until the June 15 letter from the FCC Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau, “the Commission never has sought to compel retroactive repayment,” Verizon said. The letter “is a glaring, unexplained departure from the Commission’s pre-existing policy that ‘absolute compliance with the [TRS] rules may not always be necessary.'” The company said it answered 89.7% of all IP Relay calls within 10 sec. between May 2005 and June 2006, and since Jan. 10 has met the benchmark 100% of the time. The number of days Verizon ran over the limit and the exact sum at stake weren’t revealed in the heavily-redacted filing.