Wheeler Pressures Carriers to Address Robocalls, But No Easy Fix Is in Sight
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler sent letters to the major carriers asking them to offer call-blocking services to their subscribers “now.” In June 2015, the FCC said carriers have a "greenlight” to offer robocall blocking technology (see 1506180046). Wheeler said Friday in a blog post he has gone further and asked the carriers to put the technology in place. But some industry observers said the fix Wheeler seeks will be a tough challenge for industry.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
“In regard to the Commission’s expectations that carriers respond to consumers’ blocking requests, I have sent letters to the CEOs of major wireless and wireline phone companies calling on them to offer call-blocking services to their customers now -- at no cost,” Wheeler wrote. “Consumers want and deserve more control over the calls they receive." Wheeler said he also sent letters to the intermediary carriers that connect robocallers to the carriers "reminding them of their responsibility to help facilitate the offering of blocking technologies.”
Wheeler urged carriers and standards groups to “accelerate the development and deployment of technical standards that would prevent spoofing of caller ID and thus make blocking technologies more effective, as was done in the battle against spam years ago.” The letters ask the companies to respond within 30 days with “concrete, actionable solutions to address these issues.”
The FCC is doing everything it can to fight robocalls, Wheeler said. Since 2013, it has brought 13 formal enforcement actions to combat unlawful robocalls, he said. Wheeler confirmed he circulated an order addressing robocalls made by the federal government and its contractors (see 1607180054). “After Congress changed the law authorizing the FCC to limit the number and duration of robocalls to collect federal debts, last week I circulated rules to place limits on these robocalls,” Wheeler said. “This new proposal would limit the number of debt-collection calls allowed per month, ensure the right person is called, and allow consumers to stop the calls.”
There's no easy fix for carriers to completely curb robocalls, Richard Bennett, network architect and founder of the High Tech Forum, told us. Most carriers already have in place selective call-blocking capability for a limited set of numbers, typically 20-50, Bennett said. “This may not be enough for all subscribers,” he said. “But the robocallers can simply spoof different numbers to circumvent the block. The technical solution requires reporting caller ID and authenticating callers, which runs afoul of some notions of privacy." Wheeler appears to be looking for a quick solution but this isn’t a problem that can be solved in a month, Bennett said. “The anti-spam people have been working on their similar problem for a decade and have only managed to reduce the number of spam messages to roughly half of all delivered email.”
Spammers and scammers “gained the upper hand” when VoIP made robocalls and spoofing cheap and easy, said Doug Brake, telecom policy analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. “With the IP transition, these problems are not going away anytime soon,” Brake told us. “There are no turnkey solutions that can fix the problem now without significant tradeoffs or even legal risk for carriers. Good of Wheeler to keep up the drumbeat on this issue, but finger-pointing and portraying this as an easily solved problem isn’t tremendously helpful.”
Consumers Union urged the FCC to act and urged consumers to put pressure on major carriers to address robocalls. “Robocalls are more than just a nuisance. They can cost consumers real money when they are used to commit fraud,” the group said in a news release. “Too often, that’s the case. Telephone scammers use robocalls to rip off seniors and other vulnerable consumers, resulting in an estimated $350 million in financial losses every year.”
CTIA should cooperate with the FCC, said General Counsel Tom Power. “Unwanted calls and texts are a consumer issue the wireless industry works hard to address and we look forward to working with the FCC to help address this challenge together."
“USTelecom’s members share consumers’ frustration with robocalls, which are annoying and can harm consumers and networks,” said Kevin Rupy, vice president-law and policy. “Consumers can already benefit from dozens of tools that mitigate these calls, which are provided by equipment manufacturers, third-party app developers and voice providers,” he said. “We are continuing our efforts to stop unwanted robocalls and to develop newer and better solutions for consumers and voice providers.” Work with standards groups “will help ensure the use of even more technologically robust choices for consumers, particularly now that the FCC has committed to speed the transition from older phone lines to IP networks,” Rupy said.