On July 7, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the FCC's 2019 Eliminate Access Arbitrage Order to combat gaming of the access charge system by competitive carriers that route calls to rural areas and encourage toll-free conference call centers operate in those areas. The order is intended to counteract unintended incentives for access stimulation schemes caused by peculiarities of the interstate access. The court observed:
As a result of these incentives, some sparsely populated rural areas receive a disproportionate and overwhelming number of calls. The Commission credited AT&T's observation, for instance, that twice as many calling minutes were routed in a month to Redfield, South Dakota (population 2,300) and one end office as were routed to Verizon's facilities in New York City (population 8,500,000) and 90 end offices. Similarly, Sprint explained that Iowa, with 1% of the U.S. population, accounts for 48% of Sprint’s access fee payments. In addition to higher fees, the Commission notes that access stimulation may result in overloaded networks, call blocking, and dropped calls.
In Great Lakes Communication Corp. v. FCC, a unanimous panel of the D.C. Circuit rejected Administrative Procedure Act-related challenges to the 2019 Order. The court concluded, the order was within the scope of the Commission's authority, it was reasonable, and it was a logical outgrowth of the notice of rulemaking.
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