Today's Regulatory Mix:  FCC Mandates STIR/SHAKEN, FCC Proposes Elimination of Certain Line Item  Charges, FTC Says Data Shows Increase in Coronavirus-Related Complaints 

FCC Mandates STIR/SHAKEN 

At its Open Meeting this morning, the FCC voted to require all originating and terminating voice service providers to implement STIR/SHAKEN in the Internet Protocol (IP) portions of their networks by June 30, 2021, a deadline that is consistent with Congress’s direction in the recently-enacted TRACED Act. The FCC also adopted a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to take public comment on: 

• expanding the STIR/SHAKEN implementation mandate to cover intermediate voice service providers;  
• extending the implementation deadline by one year for small voice service providers pursuant to the TRACED Act;  
• adopting requirements to promote caller ID authentication on voice networks that do not rely on IP technology; and  
• implementing other aspects of the TRACED Act. 

FCC Proposes Elimination of Certain Line Item Charges 

At its Open Meeting this morning the FCC voted to adopt a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would deregulate and detariff the end user interstate access charges currently included on consumers’ and small businesses’ local telephone bills and prohibit carriers from separately listing these charges on customers’ bills.  The FCC said that eliminating these “obscurely worded line items will make it easier for consumers to understand their telephone bills, compare prices among voice service providers, and better ensure that a voice service provider’s advertised price is closer to the total price that appears on its customers’ bills.”  

Specifically, the FCC is proposing to: 

• Eliminate prescriptive pricing regulation and require detariffing of all Telephone Access Charges—the Subscriber Line Charge, the Access Recovery Charge, the Presubscribed Interexchange Carrier Charge, the Line Port Charge, and the Special Access Surcharge.   
• Revise its truth-in-billing rules to explicitly prohibit carriers from assessing any separate Telephone Access Charges on customers’ bills after those charges are deregulated and detariffed.  

FTC Says Data Shows Increase in Coronavirus-Related Complaints 

In a press release, the FTC announced that consumer complaints related to the coronavirus (also known as COVID-19) have surged in recent weeks.  Since the beginning of the year, the FTC has received more than 7,800 coronavirus-related reports from consumers, double what they were about a week ago. 

The top categories of coronavirus-related fraud complaints include travel and vacation related reports about cancellations and refunds, reports about problems with online shopping, mobile texting scams, and government and business imposter scams.  In fraud complaints that mentioned the coronavirus, consumers reported losing a total of $4.77 million, with a reported median loss of $598. 

The FTC will release numbers regularly on its Explore Data web page detailing coronavirus-related complaints from consumers.  Visit this link for more information about the types of coronavirus-related scams we are hearing about, tips on how to avoid them, and other information about what the FTC is doing to protect consumers. 

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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.