Safe harbor rules should protect the telecom industry from liability when providers inadvertently block a legitimate call, they said, but companies placing outbound calls to customers demand efforts to ensure legitimate calls go through and corrective action when they don't, in comments to the FCC Wireline Bureau posted through Monday in docket 17-97. Public health and safety sectors report "alarmingly increased levels of blocked or mislabeled calls," said the Credit Union National Association. There's no comprehensive or reliable data on the effectiveness of blocking tools that identify illegitimate or fraudulent calls without also interfering with the ability of legitimate providers to have their calls completed or not mislabeled as spam, it said. USTelecom tells the FCC providers act with care and caution while call blocking. Providers are sensitive to overblocking, the accuracy of their analytics tools improve every day, and providers want to quickly address legitimate calls that are inadvertently blocked, it said. Industry can address concerns while under a safe harbor, it said. ACA International, which represents collection agencies, opposed a safe harbor and wants the FCC to rescind its call blocking declaratory ruling. It said current regulations give too much discretion to voice service providers to determine what types of calls can be blocked. Calls sent by alarm company central stations responding to an alarm continue to be blocked or labeled as potential fraud by voice providers, said the Alarm Industry Communications Committee. AICC urged the FCC to adopt a critical call list of numbers that may never be blocked, including central station numbers used to respond to alarms. But a database of whitelisted numbers "would be a target for bad actors to spoof and otherwise exploit, even with robust security measures," CTIA said. T-Mobile asked the FCC to work with stakeholders to adopt a narrow definition of critical calls, such as those from public safety answering points. T-Mobile also asked the FCC to remain flexible as it measures the success of call blocking. "The tactics used by scammers to target and reach consumers are always evolving," it said. Voice service providers should notify callers immediately upon blocking or labeling a call as spam, Twilio said, and designate a contact point for redress when calls are blocked erroneously. Industry must coalesce around a standard enabling transmittal of secure handling of asserted information using tokens (Shaken) and secure telephone identity revisited (Stir) call authentication information access across TDM-based networks as mandatory implementation deadlines approach, the Cloud Communications Alliance said.

The telecom industry disagreed with Connecticut consumer advocates about whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit invited state net neutrality rules through its Mozilla decision. Connecticut’s Joint Energy and Technology Committee held a Thursday hearing on SB-5, a hybrid net neutrality/ISP privacy measure that would reverse repeals of past FCC orders on those topics. The court didn’t "free the states” to make rules, said AT&T in written testimony. “While the DC Circuit vacated the express preemption provisions in the 2018 Order, the Court stressed that its decision did not preclude the FCC from relying on established principles of conflict preemption or any other implied preemption doctrine to invalidate state laws that actually undermine that order.” USTelecom Vice President-Strategic Initiatives Mike Saperstein urged at “minimum” to “delay further consideration of this legislation until courts resolve the pending challenges to state open internet laws.” USTelecom is part of ISP lawsuits in Vermont and California, plus another against a Maine ISP privacy law. American Civil Liberties Union-Connecticut policy counsel Kelly McConney Moore wrote that state regulation is “clearly permissible” post-Mozilla. Pua Ford of Connecticut League of Women Voters agreed: “Connecticut may now confidently follow Washington, Oregon, California, and other states in drawing up its own regulations.” Industry said a national policy would be best. Consumer advocates said that’s not likely soon. “States enacting protections against the worst overreaching of the FCC order will help to make it more likely that the FCC and telecommunications companies come to the table with the states and other stakeholders to work together to find a more balanced compromise,” wrote acting Connecticut Consumer Counsel Richard Sobolewski. Maryland lawmakers heard similar testimony Wednesday (see 2002260057).

Small, rural carriers may find it harder to absorb costs of federal requirements to trace illegal robocalls, said panelists at an FCBA event Thursday on implementing the Traced Act, which became law last year. Voice providers aren't allowed to add line item charges for call blocking services. That doesn't mean carriers won't raise prices. "It depends on the magnitude of the costs" to companies for upgrading their networks and ongoing costs to administer call blocking and traceback efforts, NTCA Senior Vice President-Industry and Business Affairs Mike Romano told us. "If the costs are significant, they'll have to" raise prices, Romano said. He hasn't heard of such plans. Philip Macres of Klein Law Group said he has heard that even for small operators, it can cost $100,000 to upgrade a network for call authentication. "There are upfront costs and ongoing costs to operate," Romano said. USTelecom Senior Vice President-Policy and Advocacy Patrick Halley said operators should be careful in evaluating vendors because risk can be involved "when you have a regulatory obligation to do something in a short period." Romano said NTCA members are sensitive to issues of "reasonable analytics" used for call authentication because rural carriers were the ones that historically had problems with call completion when larger carriers didn't send phone traffic their way. The vast majority of members run IP-based phone networks, Romano said, which makes it easier to provide caller authentication for traffic originating on them. Too often, rural carriers must rely on tandem networks that still use TDM switching, he said: In many of those cases, authenticated calls from the small IP-based phone companies "will be sending out [authentication] certificates to nowhere."

The consortium selected to manage industry efforts to trace illegal robocalls to comply with the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act "should enable the participation of a diverse range of voice service providers in the tracebacks that it conducts and allow the participation of any and all providers that are identified in the call path of a traceback," USTelecom told the FCC. Comments were posted through Tuesday in docket 20-22. The agency opened a rulemaking this month (see 2002060038). NCTA wants the consortium to create an executive committee represented by different industry sectors "given an equal voice in the management." The cable group wants budget transparency if fees are collected. It asked whether a traceback group must be independent from a single association. Incompas wants the FCC to spell out how it will evaluate a registrant's claim of neutrality, and it wants to know what criteria the agency will use to select a single consortium for the private-led traceback efforts. Incompas suggested the North American Numbering Council advise the FCC here. The FCC also got comments this week on technical requirements for a reassigned numbers database (see 2002250062).

CTIA, NCTA and USTelecom had meetings with aides to all FCC commissioners to discuss a broad safe harbor as part of robocalling rules. “Adopting a broad safe harbor based on reasonable analytics will give voice service providers the clarity and certainty needed to meaningfully advance the Commission’s goal of protecting consumers from the scourge of illegal and unwanted robocalls while protecting legitimate calls,” the groups said, posted Monday in docket 17-59.

An item on a proposed rural healthcare (RHC) support mechanism circulated on FCC's eighth floor Tuesday, said a circulation list posted Friday on the agency's website. The item could address a funding year 2019 shortfall allocating unused RHC money from the prior funding year, an official said. It would also address funding year 2019 funding requests for multiyear payments that exceeded a budget sub-cap. Industry also wants the FCC to clarify new certification rules for its rural telehealth program set to take effect July 1, USTelecom said in a filing posted Friday to docket 17-310 and in meetings Tuesday with Wireline Bureau staff and commissioner aides. The commission voted in August to change the way it subsidizes its rural healthcare program despite widespread concerns (see 1908010041).

Google's "verbatim copying” of Oracle computer code into a “competing commercial product” wasn’t fair use, the Trump administration said in a Supreme Court filing Wednesday (see 2002190058). Also siding with Oracle in separate filings were USTelecom, the Motion Picture Association, the RIAA, the National Music Publishers' Association and the Copyright Alliance.

USTelecom met with FCC Wireline Deputy Bureau Chief Lisa Hone and an aide to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai on its effort to develop a consensus proposal on 8YY revisions as the agency seeks to transition many rate elements to bill and keep (see 1809050027). The group "emphasized the need for a suitable recovery mechanism that would allow carriers to recover 8YY originating access revenues as intercarrier compensation reforms are implemented," it said in a filing posted Tuesday in docket 18-156. Those mechanisms should differ for price cap and rate-of-return ILECs, it added.

USTelecom asked the FCC to reject an Incompas petition to exclude from a proposed Digital Opportunity Data Collection rulemaking the definition of "facilities-based" broadband any providers that supply service through the purchase or lease of capacity of last-mile facilities from others, in a filing posted Tuesday in docket 19-195.

Maine should fight a lawsuit by national ISP associations challenging a state ISP privacy law, said the American Civil Liberties Union and an ex-FCC official Tuesday. CTIA, NCTA, USTelecom and the American Cable Association sued Maine Friday in the U.S. District Court of Maine, before the regulations take effect July 1. Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) signed the bill in June countering Congress' 2017 repeal of 2016 FCC broadband privacy rules, after bipartisan votes in the legislature (see 1906060050).