Frontier Communications has asked the FCC for permission to discontinue two legacy services: Busy Verification (BV) and Busy Interrupt (BI). Consumers now have plenty of next-generation VoIP and other IP-based service options, rendering the old busy signal obsolete.
The BV and BI features allowed customers to obtain assistance in determining if a called line is in use (verification) or in interrupting a communication in progress (interrupt) by dialing "0" to contact an operator.
In a FCC filing (PDF), Frontier said it “seeks to discontinue these services due to a lack of demand.”
“New technologies, new products and services, and changing customer demand have rendered BV and BI features unreliable and obsolete,” Frontier said in the FCC filing. “BV and BI do not work on fax or data lines, wireless, VoIP, and in some cases, ported numbers.”
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Frontier plans to stop offering BV and BI features on June 1, 2018, or as soon after that date as the FCC grants the discontinuance. When the BV and BI features are discontinued, these features will no longer be available to Frontier’s wholesale ILEC, CLEC and IXC customers that use the telco’s trunking services enabling BV/BI.
The service provider said that this discontinuance is for the BV and BI features only and does not include all operator services.
Since much of the market has already replaced these services with other communications services or applications, which is illustrated by a lack of demand, Frontier told the FCC that the public convenience and necessity will not be adversely affected by the discontinuance of these services.