Iowa Congressman David Young spoke on the House floor this week about the need to improve phone service in rural communities. “Families and businesses in rural America should have the same communication access as those living in urban areas,” Young said. The Republican is a cosponsor of the Improving Rural Call Quality and Reliability Act.

“Telephone companies often rely on intermediate providers to connect calls from larger networks to local service providers and all too often, especially in rural areas, those calls are poor quality, looped, dropped, not even connected, or disconnected,” Young said. The legislation was approved in the U.S. Thursday and now goes to the President for his signature. Other co-sponsors of the bill referred to the issue of dropped calls in rural America as an epidemic.

“Our bill will help address this problem by requiring providers to register with the Federal Communications Commission in order to meet quality standards and ensure reliable phone service in rural areas,” Young said. “It also prohibits providers from using intermediary routing services not registered with the FCC.”

(Radio Iowa)