FCC: Phone carriers that profit from robocalls could have all calls blocked
Safe harbor lets phone companies block all calls from “bad-actor” telecoms. …
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“Bad-actor” phone companies that profit from robocalls could be blocked by more legitimate carriers under rules approved unanimously yesterday by the Federal Communications Commission.
Under the change, the FCC said carriers can block calls “from bad-actor upstream voice service providers that pass illegal or unwanted calls along to other providers, when those upstream providers have been notified but fail to take action to stop these calls.” Carriers that impose this type of blocking will get a safe harbor from liability “for the unintended or inadvertent blocking of wanted calls, thus eliminating a concern that kept some companies from implementing robust robocall blocking efforts.”
This expanded level of blocking—spurred by a new law in which Congress directed the FCC to expand safe harbors—could be implemented by companies that sell phone service directly to consumers. That includes mobile carriers Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, traditional landline companies, and VoIP providers.
Carriers won’t be able to block calls from just any provider. As Chairman Ajit Pai explained, the safe harbor will be available in cases when the “bad-actor” telecom has been notified by the FCC that it is carrying illegal traffic and “fails either to effectively mitigate such traffic or to implement effective measures to prevent customers from using its network to originate illegal calls.”
Allowing carriers to block virtually all calls from a particular provider is a significant change in policy, the FCC said in a draft of yesterday’s order:
Until very recently, we have only authorized call blocking for particular calls, not based on the provider.
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