The order includes a safe harbor for voice service providers and recognizes protections for callers required by TRACED Act. Editor’s note: This article is available for members only.
6/25/2020 12:00
The Federal Communications Commission released a draft order on call blocking and labeling that, among other changes, includes a liability safe harbor for voice service providers. Some initial safeguards for legitimate calls are included, but ACA International will continue advocating for appropriate redress options and additional clarity to be considered as part of the safe harbor during the sunshine period, which will run for the next two weeks.
The draft call blocking and labeling order issued on Thursday, June 25 addresses the following issues:
- It grants a liability safe harbor to carriers for erroneous call blocking if they use reasonable analytics and incorporate SHAKEN/STIR.
- Carriers will also be required to provide a redress process for unblocking lawful calls. It acknowledges that Congress required protection for callers, stating, “The TRACED Act specifically directs us to ensure that robocall blocking services provided on an opt-out or opt-in basis are provided with transparency and effective redress options for callers.”
- Accordingly, the draft order requires that any voice service provider that blocks calls must designate a single point of contact for callers, as well as other voice service providers.
- It also states that blocking providers must investigate and resolve these blocking disputes in a reasonable amount of time that is consistent with industry best practices. The amount of time that is “reasonable” may vary depending on the specific circumstances of the blocking and the resolution of the blocking dispute. Blocking providers must also publish contact information clearly and conspicuously on their public-facing websites.
- The report also requires that when a caller makes a credible claim of erroneous blocking and the voice service provider determines that the calls should not have been blocked, they must promptly cease blocking calls from that number unless circumstances change.
- Callers may not be charged to report blocking errors.
- Carriers will also have to make individualized lists of blocked calls available to consumers. If a consumer wants to know which calls (to their number) have been blocked, the carrier will have to provide that information.
- The FCC states that consistent with the June 2019 Declaratory Ruling, consumers may choose, either via opt-in or opt-out consent, to have their terminating voice service provider block categories of calls that may include legal calls. In these cases, terminating voice service providers are not obligated to cease blocking such calls merely because the caller claims they are legal. ACA has argued that consumers are often not making a choice when not opting out and that completing the opt-out process can be complex. ACA plans to advocate for more clarity surrounding this issue.
- The FCC is also declining to create an automatic whitelist for phone numbers.
The FCC will seek comment on its requirement that carriers designate a single point of contact and a process for resolving inadvertent blocking, consistent with the TRACED Act's requirements. The FCC will also seek comment on "establishing a process for a calling party adversely affected by caller ID authentication information to verify the authenticity of their calls." The FCC will discuss and vote on the draft call blocking order in its open commission meeting July 16. ACA will be working with its broad coalition of industry partners to advocate for additional consideration of caller concerns during the next several weeks.
The FCC also released a staff report, “Call Blocking Tools Now Substantially Available to Consumers: Report on Call Blocking.”
The FCC provided some acknowledgement about the significant evidence of overly broad call blocking. The report cites the Number Sentry study and call blocking statistics provided by ACA, although it takes issue with some of the data points. It states, “Commenters representing industries that make a lot of outbound calls assert that the rate of erroneously blocked calls is much higher than voice service providers indicate. Part of this false positive block, however, may result from consumers choosing not to answer calls from numbers they do not recognize and allowing the call to go to voicemail instead, an option offered by voice service providers.” ACA plans to address these points with the FCC.
A few takeaways from the report include:
- The report acknowledges that commenters contend that voice service providers, or their third-party analytics companies, have imposed significant fees to correct erroneous blocking.
- The report lists contact information for voice service providers and analytics companies for callers to report erroneous labeling or blocking. ACA has raised this as a concern on behalf of small businesses. (See page 29-30 of the report for information).
- The report also noted intercept messages provided by Verizon, AT&T and Nomorobo, and stated that such intercept messages could be confusing to calling parties.
- As for whitelisting and a possible critical calls list, the report says that the FCC may address this in a later proceeding, but that commenters were largely divided on the issue.
- The FCC will issue a second report on these issues in June 2021.
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