FCC is Right To Clamp Down on Robocalls, Senators Say

When the Congress created the National Do Not Call Registry in 2003 “we thought we had put an end to the plague of unwelcome telemarketers who were interrupting Americans morning, noon and night,” said Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, during the hearing. “Now, nearly 12 years later, phones are once again ringing off the hook.” People who signed up for the registry are still getting unwanted calls, she said. Technology is making it easier and cheaper for companies to make robocalls, Collins said.

Phone companies aren’t causing the growing number of unwanted calls, but are in the best position to curb the practice, said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., ranking committee member. “Great strides” have been made in developing call-blocking technologies, she said. But telecom industry officials “continue to insist that the law does not allow them” to install the technology, she said. “That doesn’t work.”

McCaskill said she hopes other members of the FCC will vote for Chairman Tom Wheeler’s TCPA proposal at next week’s meeting. “I’m grateful that the FCC has used its existing authority to modernize its rules,” she said. “However, I also recognize that on some cases statutory changes must be made to keep up with rapidly evolving technology.” McCaskill said that's why she and Collins plan to reintroduce legislation strengthening FCC enforcement authority over fraudulent robocalls.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va,, said he had just seen a House appropriations bill that would provide $315 million for the FCC in FY 2016, which is $25 million less than FY 2015 and $73 million less than the president’s budget request. “We’ve got a lot of budget issues, but this is an issue that demands vigorous FCC enforcement,” he said. “Dramatically reducing the FCC’s budget seems unwise to me.”

In testimony to the committee, Missouri Deputy Attorney General Joe Dandurand said the AG’s Consumer Protection Division received 57,000 complaints last year about a wide variety of scams. The top complaint “by a significant margin is about unwanted and illegal telemarketing calls,” he said.

“I would say the best advice is to just not answer the calls,” said Linda Blase, a Dallas businesswoman who appeared before the committee as a victim of spoofed calls and robocalls. “If you answer the calls you’re giving them more information than you want them to have. If you don’t answer the calls they will eventually stop calling you.” Carriers have a responsibility to do more to clamp down on robocalls, she said. “We’re certainly paying enough for their services.”

Vote on Tap Next Week

Meanwhile, industry groups and companies are making a last push on the TCPA ruling at the FCC with the TCPA agenda item set for a sunset notice Thursday, effectively cutting off further lobbying.

The Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned electric utilities, said there's broad support for its petition with the American Gas Association seeking TCPA clarity. The petition asks the agency to confirm that when a customer provides a telephone number to an energy utility, it constitutes “’prior express consent’” to receive autodialed or recorded nontelemarketing informational calls (see 1503270020). “The record contains surprisingly little opposition, and reflects a strong consensus, that energy utilities should be permitted under the TCPA to make most of the calls outlined in the petition,” EEI said. Even NARUC and the New Jersey Division of Rate Counsel offered qualified support, EEI said. While neither supported the petition in its entirety “both agreed that the utility industry should be able to make most of the calls (or texts) covered by the petition,” EEI said.

The American Bankers Association, the author of another TCPA petition (see 1410140162), said in a filing it seeks only limited relief. The petition “seeks permission for financial institutions to make only one contact with a consumer to provide a fraud alert, data breach notification or remediation information,” ABA said. “Only if the consumer fails to respond to the initial call or text does the financial institution need to send additional messages to ensure that the consumer received the notification.”

Lawyers for United Healthcare Services explained to FCC officials that granting its TCPA request “will help ensure that wireless consumers can continue to benefit from the important non-telemarketing, informational healthcare calls that they have consented to receive,” said an ex parte filing. United Healthcare asked the FCC to confirm that “parties are not liable under the TCPA for informational, nontelemarketing autodialed and prerecorded healthcare calls to wireless telephone numbers that have been reassigned without the caller’s knowledge, as long as the caller previously obtained ‘prior express consent’ to place calls to that specific telephone number.”

USTelecom officials met with aides to Commissioners Ajit Pai and Mike O’Rielly, said an ex parte filing. USTelecom discussed “industry efforts directed towards protecting consumers from unwanted calls,” the group said. “We also noted that there is no single solution to the robocall problem, and discussed the technological challenges that Caller ID spoofing creates for blacklist-based blocking solutions.”