Avoid Unnecessary Regulation in Revising Robocall Rules, Industry Urges FCC

Industry and callers urged caution, in FCC comments on a July Further NPRM on robocalls (see 2007160045) in docket 17-59. The rules offer companies two safe harbors from liability for the unintended or inadvertent blocking of wanted calls, and the FCC sought comment on other ways to protect consumers from robocalls and inform them about blocking efforts. Comments were due Monday on the NPRM, aimed at implementing the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and Pallone-Thune Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act (Traced Act).

The American Bankers Association, American Financial Services Association, Consumer Bankers Association and other financial groups said companies whose calls are blocked must be told it's happening. “Without a notification requirement, it will not be possible for a call-blocking service to provide ‘transparency … for … callers,’ as the TRACED Act requires,” they said. Require providers to address wrongly blocked calls with 24 hours, the groups advised: “A legitimate business whose call is erroneously blocked cannot receive ‘effective redress,’ as required by the TRACED Act, if removal of the block takes weeks or months.”

USTelecom said the FCC must work with industry. “To ensure trust in the telephone network, voice service providers must deliver the calls that their customers desire and expect, which necessitates clear and sufficient processes to address any claims of inappropriate blocking or labeling,” USTelecom said: “The Commission has endorsed an industry-led, flexible approach in the [secure telephone identity revisited (Stir) and secure handling of asserted information using tokens (Shaken)] and traceback contexts, rather than prescriptive regulations, and should maintain that approach on these issues as well.”

In addition to current safe harbors, CTIA urged an additional harbor that “targets bad-actors, which will help incentivize providers to more aggressively police their networks by shielding providers that work to effectively mitigate bad traffic that pass through critical points within the voice telephone system.” Providers have blocked billions of calls, but “lingering uncertainty and liability risks limit providers from broader and more robust deployment,” CTIA said. The group stressed the importance of working with industry.

“Continue to broaden and strengthen safe harbor protections and allow providers the flexibility to adopt their own innovative and effective forms of call blocking without imposing unnecessary obligations,” T-Mobile commented: “While the Commission should expand the call-blocking safe harbor to include network-based call rejections, it should avoid being overly prescriptive and should not impose additional redress or mislabeling requirements or take further steps to prevent the blocking of emergency public safety calls.”

“Take into account the nascent nature of call blocking technologies and the impact on small and rural carriers,” the Competitive Carriers Association advised. CCA warned against overregulation: “Both Congress and the FCC have acknowledged the undue hardships that small providers may experience with respect to the implementation of call blocking technologies into their networks.”

New call authentication measures “should be limited and consistent with the language of the TRACED Act,” Incompas said. The group opposed a new safe harbor. “The Commission has met the statutory requirements of the TRACED Act under section 4(c)(2) by adopting a safe harbor based on reasonable analytics that requires caller ID authentication information,” the group said. The FCC should “align rural call completion and call authentication requirements for voice service providers subject to a compliance delay.”

ACA Connects urged caution “to avoid the adoption of requirements that could conflict with or undermine the Commission’s policies to promote implementation of call authentication.” ACA supported a new safe harbor as proposed, which “will encourage more robust and effective use of call-blocking to protect consumers from illegal robocalls.” The group supported a requirement that providers participate in a traceback program.

NTCA said some process is necessary to redress mislabeled legitimate calls. “The ability of consumers that believe or come to find that their calls have been blocked or mislabeled in error to quickly rectify the mistake is necessary,” the association commented. The group supports terminating providers “provide to their subscribers, upon request, a list of calls intended to reach them but blocked instead.”