104 STAT. 986 PUBLIC LAW 101-435—OCT. 17, 1990

Public Law 101-435
101st Congress

An Act

Oct 17 1990 ^o re(lu^re the Federal Communications Commission to prescribe rules to protect
' consumers from unfair practices in the provision of operator services, and for other

[H.R. 971] purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
Telephone United States of America in Congress assembled,

Operator
Consumer SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

Improvement This Act may be cited as the "Telephone Operator Consumer

Act of 1990. Services Improvement Act of 1990".

47 USC 609 note.

47 USC 226 note. SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

The Congress finds that—

(1) the divestiture of AT&T and decisions allowing open entry
for competitors in the telephone marketplace produced a vari-
ety of new services and many new providers of existing tele-
phone services;

(2) the growth of competition in the telecommunications
market makes it essential to ensure that safeguards are in place
to assure fairness for consumers and service providers alike;

(3) a variety of providers of operator services now compete to
win contracts to provide operator services to hotels, hospitals,
airports, and other aggregators of telephone business from
consumers;

(4) the mere existence of a variety of service providers in the
operator services marketplace is significant in making that
market competitive only when consumers are able to make
informed choices from among those service providers;

(5) however, often consumers have no choices in selecting a
provider of operator services, and often attempts by consumers
to reach their preferred long distance carrier by using a tele-
phone billing card, credit card, or prearranged access code
number are blocked;

(6) a number of State regulatory authorities have taken action
to protect consumers using intrastate operator services;

(7) from January 1988 through February 1990, the Federal
Communications Commission received over 4,000 complaints
from consumers about operator services;

(8) those consumers have complained that they are denied
access to the interexchange carrier of their choice, that they are
deceived about the identity of the company providing operator
services for their calls and the rates being charged, that they
lack information on what they can do to complain about unfair
treatment by an operator service provider, and that they are,
accordingly, being deprived of the free choice essential to the
operation of a competitive market;

(9) the Commission has testified that its actions have been
insufficient to correct the problems in the operator services
industry to date; and