The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) outlining the next steps in the Commission’s ongoing efforts to implement the TRACED Act. This next round of rulemaking specifically pertains to the TRACED Act’s requirement’s related to exemptions to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act’s (TCPA) consent requirements for the use of automatic telephone dialing systems (ATDS), artificial voice calls, and prerecorded calls.
The TRACED Act instructs the FCC to ensure that TCPA exemptions meet certain conditions The NPRM’s summary of Section 8 of the TRACED Act explains that those conditions are that the “exemption[s] contain requirements with respect to: ‘(i) the classes of parties that may make such calls; (ii) the classes of parties that may be called; and (iii) the number of such calls that a calling party may make to a particular called party.’”
The exemptions apply to the following kinds of calls:
- Non-commercial calls to a residence
- Commercial calls to a residence that do not constitute telemarketing
- Tax exempt, non-profit calls to a residence
- HIPPA-related calls to a residence
- Package delivery calls to a wireless number
- Financial institution calls to a wireless number
- Healthcare-related calls to a wireless number
- Inmate calling service calls to a wireless number
- Cellular carrier calls to their own subscribers
The NPRM was announced on October 1, 2020. Comments on the NPRM are due within 15 days of its publication in the Federal Register, with reply comments due 10 days after that. This short timeline is due to a requirement in the TRACED Act that Section 8 be implemented by December 30, 2020, exactly one year after the act was signed into law.
Further Reading