RICHMOND — The State Corporation Commission (SCC) has denied a request from the Virginia Telecommunications Industry Association (VTIA) to eliminate the requirement that local telephone companies in Virginia provide free directory assistance to their customers. The SCC instead reduced the mandatory number of free monthly directory assistance calls from two to one.

Free directory assistance calls are included with basic local dial tone telephone service. The VTIA was seeking to eliminate the provision.

The two call allowance has been in place since 2008. In its final order, the Commission said, "We recognize that technological and market advancements provide many customers with alternatives to white page listings. Some of the alternatives, however, may not be as readily accessible to telephone users to be considered an equivalent substitute for the directory assistance that has been part of their telephone service for many years." The Commission added, "Moreover, those alternatives do not necessarily fulfill an essential function provided by the free … allowance; that is, those alternatives will not necessarily contain the listings that are absent from the white page directory or from other sources."

According to the Commission, "We find that a minimum of one free monthly local directory assistance call allowance is, and will remain, an essential part of dial tone telephone service provided by Virginia's local exchange companies."

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Case Number PUC-2009-00074