Both the phone company and CO equipment manufacturers have no incentive to bring the loop current down. All they have to do is make a standard 2500 set work (which has no active electronic circuitry to burn up), and the farther out it works... the better. Until the FCC sets a new standard for high loop current (unlikely), or CPE manufacturers take account of the high loop current problem (seems unlikely), the Interconnect company will be left holding the repair bag for these problems. Most CPE equipment was designed based on low loop current problems... it works well right down to 23ma. CPE manufacturers have been really slow to try to head off the high loop current problem. In the rare case of low loop current (below 23ma), the phone company is required to bring it up to 23ma.

The main problem created by high loop current is heat. The components on the trunk card or telephone that connect to a CO line with high loop current get hotter than the manufacturers planned for. When the components get hot, their specs change, which makes the circuit work differently - usually with unpredictable results. If the loop current is high enough, a component can get fried and the device will stop working instead of just having problems. Eventually, the heat from the high loop current can damage one or more components on a trunk card, shortening the life of the card."