As part of their continued effort to reduce illegal robocalls, specifically to reassigned numbers, the FCC issued a new Notice of Proposed Rulemaking last week. The purpose of the Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is to seek comments on ways to address the reassigned numbers problem.
In January 2018, the FCC issued a final rule (Advanced Methods To Target and Eliminate Unlawful Robocalls) regarding recent efforts to reduce illegal robocalls. That rule allowed providers to “proactively block telephone calls when the subscriber of a phone number requests that calls purporting to originate from that number be blocked.”
It also included calls purport to originate from three categories of unassigned phone numbers:
- Invalid numbers
- Valid numbers that are not allocated to a voice service provider
- Valid numbers that are allocated but not assigned to a subscriber
The agency “[Proposes] to ensure that one or more databases are available to provide callers with the comprehensive and timely information they need to avoid calling reassigned numbers.
The FCC seeks comment below on, among other things:
- The information that callers who choose to use a reassigned numbers database need from such a database
- How to ensure that the information is reported to a database
- The best approach to making that information available to callers
Read the full Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.