House Committee Advances Robocalling Bill

Among other things, the bill would require the FCC to adopt critical consumer protections, require all carriers, over time, to implement a new technology to make sure that caller-ID information is appropriately authenticated with no additional line item charge for consumers on their bill, and allow the blocking of calls in a reasonable manner without an extra charge.  Amendments adopted at the Committee level include:

• A Manager’s Amendment making technical changes to the bill and includes transparency and redress for erroneously blocked calls.
• An Amendment offered by Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) and Michael Burgess (R-TX) that requires the FCC to establish a Hospital Robocall Working Group to, among other things, issue best practices to help voice service providers combat unlawful robocalls made to hospitals and to help hospitals protect themselves from robocalls.  The amendment also requires the FCC to initiate a proceeding to determine whether the voluntary adoption of the practices can be facilitated.  
• An Amendment offered by Reps. Bill Flores (R-TX) and Jerry McNerney (D-CA) that allows the FCC to assess an additional $10,000 penalty for a robocall violation if the offender acted with intent to cause the violation.

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The Regulatory Mix Today: House Committee Advances Robocalling Bill, FCC's O'Rielly on US Virgin Islands 911 Fee Diversion

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FCC‘s O’Rielly On US Virgin Islands 911 Fee Diversion

FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly has written to the Governor of the US Virgin Islands concerning the “unacceptable and harmful past practices of the Virgin Islands to divert consumer-paid 9-1-1 fees to other purposes.”  According to the FCC’s latest report utilizing 2017 data, the Virgin Islands diverted over $1.2 million in 9-1-1 fees to other functions.  O’Rielly called such diversion “an unacceptable breach of trust and responsibility, as the collection of this money is expressly authorized for a specific and critical purpose. Officials owe it to the emergency personnel tasked with answering critical calls and to the Virgin Islands’ residents in need of emergency assistance to ensure that 9-1-1 fees go directly toward 9-1-1 services. This situation is even more problematic given the huge expenses of upgrading and modernizing 9-1 -1 systems to next-generation capabilities.”  He added: ”As a steward of the ratepayer-collected monies used for USF disbursements, I would find it extremely difficult to support providing additional USF funding to the Virgin Islands without a firm commitment and a timeline from your administration detailing how you are prepared to put an end to fee diversion practices once and for all... Your guarantees and demonstrated compliance plan could go a long way toward alleviating Commission concerns, which if left unaddressed could put precious USF support at risk — an unacceptable outcome and not one that the Commission would take lightly.”

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The Regulatory Mix, Inteserra’s blog of telecom related regulatory activities, is a snapshot of PUC, FCC, legislative, and occasionally court issues that our regulatory monitoring team uncovers each day. Depending on their significance, some items may be the subject of an Inteserra Briefing.