Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 104 Part 1.djvu/1020

 104 STAT. 986 PUBLIC LAW 101-435—OCT. 17, 1990 Public Law 101-435 101st Congress An Act Oct 17 1990 '^° require 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. Services 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 variety of new services and many new providers of existing telephone 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 telephone 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

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