Dial Around Juggernaut - Page 3
On February 27, 1989, the chief of the FCC's Common Carrier Bureau released a Memorandum Opinion and Order that, among other things, declared the practice of blocking dial around calls to be unlawful. Telecommunications Research and Action Center, et al v. Central Corporation International, et al, Order #89-237, 4 F.C.C.R. 2157 (FCC 1989). Among the location providers who offered the telephones to the transient public, there was one group affected by this FCC ruling more than the rest: the payphone service providers. Unlike the other types of call aggregators, the payphone service providers were exclusively in the business of selling telephone calls. From their point of view, being forced to unblock access to any long distance carrier would cause them to suffer substantial losses. Keep in mind, by this time, the PSPs were already accustomed to earning commissions from the long distance operator assisted calls being placed from their payphones.
It is therefore in 1989 that frustration in the competitive telecommunications marketplace shifted from the angered public who was being gouged by the operator service providers, to the PSPs who found themselves in the position of suddenly being forced to give away calls for free that they were used to receiving, in many cases, multiple dollars in commission for each call. The dial around situation had now reached the boiling point. To be sure, some PSPs refused to unblock their calls, and others complied with the FCC's Order by unblocking access to the long distance carrier of the caller's choice, but not before first requiring a coin deposit for the call (the FCC's Order only declared blocking as an unlawful practice but failed to specify whether unblocked calls should be free to the caller). At this point, Congress entered the scene and cooled the cauldron by passing new legislation known as the Telephone Operator Consumer Services Improvement Act of 1990, Public Law Number 101-435, 104 Stat. 986 (1990), which was signed into law by the president of the United States on October 17, 1990.