Wireline Report

REGULATORY UPDATE >> The Wireline Report

FCC’s stepped-up efforts to reduce robocalls. By Mary J. Sisak, Partner, Blooston Law (mjs@bloostonlaw.com)

Blocking of Central Station Calls Likely to Continue as Efforts to Stop Robocalls Ramp Up A number of alarm central stations have reported that calls placed by the central station to respond to an alarm signal have been blocked or mislabeled as suspected fraud by a voice service provider. It appears this is in part the result of the FCC’s stepped-up efforts to reduce unwanted or illegal robocalls and, specifi cally, its declaratory ruling clarifying that voice service providers may block suspected fraudulent calls based on analytics without the customers consent. In comments recently fi led at the FCC, other industries also report that their lawful calls have been blocked or mislabeled as potential fraud by voice service providers. Companies also report mixed results in resolving call blocking issues with voice service providers.

If your central station has experienced call blocking or the mislabeling of calls as potential fraud, please send such information to TMA so that it can be provided to the FCC in an effort to ensure that calls from central stations are not blocked or mislabeled.

Send your information to: Celia T. Besore, Executive Director, TMA, at cbesore@tma.us.

TRACED Act Requires Authentication of Calls to Prevent Illegal Robocalls In addition to call blocking based on analytics, voice service providers also will block calls that are not authenticated once call authentication technology is implemented.

The Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act (the TRACED Act), signed into law on December 30, 2019, requires voice service providers who are interconnected with the public network to adopt call authentication technologies, such as SHAKEN/STIR, to verify that incoming calls are legitimate before they reach consumers. As originally proposed, the legislation only required voice service providers to use “reasonable efforts” when blocking calls and did not provide any protection from blocking for emergency public safety calls. However, after the AICC made the bill’s proponents aware that calls from central stations could be blocked as a result of the call authentication technology, and of the adverse public safety implications of blocking such calls and other emergency public safety calls, language was added to the bill to protect emergency public safety calls from call blocking.

The TRACED Act also increases penalties for those making unlawful robocalls and makes it easier for the FCC to pursue penalties; tasks a working group of various government agencies to identify ways to criminally prosecute illegal robocalling; and addresses the issue of one-ring scams, where international scammers try to get individuals to return their calls so they can charge them exorbitant fees.

DOJ and FTC Enforce Robocall Laws The Department of Justice fi led civil actions for temporary restraining orders in two cases against fi ve companies and three individuals allegedly responsible for carrying hundreds of millions of fraudulent robocalls to American consumers. According to the DOJ, the companies were facilitating foreign-based fraud schemes targeting Americans. Most of the calls originated in India and targeted the elderly. The defendants in the cases are Ecommerce National LLC d/b/a TollFreeDeals.com; SIP Retail d/b/a sipretail.com; and their owner/operators, Nicholas Palumbo and Natasha Palumbo of Scottsdale, Arizona and Global Voicecom Inc., Global Telecommunication Services Inc., KAT Telecom Inc., aka IP Dish, and their owner/operator, Jon Kahen of Great Neck, NY.

The Federal Trade Commission sent letters to 19 Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service providers warning them that the FTC will take action when the VoIP providers knowingly facilitate illegal robocalls.” According to the FTC, action may be taken if they assist a seller or telemarketer who they know, or consciously avoid knowing, is violating the agency’s Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR). The FTC did not disclose the names of the companies warned.