September 8, 2020

What Does the Letter Specify? The main argument of the letter correctly posits that many legitimate and urgent calls continue to be blocked under the current legal framework. As part of the TRACED Act, the FCC required Voice Service Providers to develop plans and mechanisms to notify callers that their calls have been blocked. The ACA reports that many of its partners are not seeing such mechanisms, or if these exist, they are ineffective in their one purpose, as the partners “continue to experience improper, error-prone labeling of outbound calling numbers, blocking of legitimate calls, and difficulty identifying and remedying blocked calls.” The letter further goes on to point out that the adoption of “safe harbors” for voice providers will undoubtedly increase the number of wrongly blocked legal calls. Letter Requests As part of their letter to the FCC, the ACA & Partners request the following: requiring Voice Service Providers to notify callers immediately when a call is blocked; requiring Voice Service Providers to remove erroneous blocks promptly — no later than 24 hours after the Provider learns of the block; prohibiting a Voice Service Provider from blocking a call that cannot be authenticated under the STIR/SHAKEN call authentication framework because the call originated from a Provider that cannot sign calls or the call traveled through a Provider that is unable to transmit the authentication information; requiring Voice Service Providers to apply the TRACED Act redress mechanisms to the third-party call-labeling services that Providers utilize. This proposed course of action would indeed satisfy all parties specified by the TRACED Act, protecting consumers from robocalls and fraudulent calls, as well as offering effective redress options for lawful callers.

Day: September 8, 2020

FCC Urged to Protect Lawful Callers