Few Comments Filed in Response to June Call Blocking NPRM

Association said the FCC should protect legitimate callers, while clamping down on illegal calls. ETA said safe harbor should allow “a good faith caller the opportunity to show compliance at the pleading stage in private litigation in order to achieve early dismissal of claims that lack merit.” Encore Capital Group, a debt management and recovery firm, urged protection for legitimate callers. “As the FCC has recognized, our industry and many other industries still have extremely significant concerns that legitimate, time-sensitive calls to consumers will be improperly blocked by voice service providers,” Encore said. “Mandate specific processes and procedures that voice service providers must take to prevent improper call blocking and, should improper call blocking occur, to expeditiously unblock the calls.” The Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable supported the overall approach, seeking tweaks. “Provide some parameters around the ‘reasonable analytics’ the Declaratory Ruling authorizes as the basis for provider opt-out call-blocking programs,” the department said: Providers should be prohibited from customers for call blocking and the FCC should “make the unwanted call information that it acquires available to state commissions.” TransNexus, which sells anti-robocall software, said the FCC should establish a safe harbor for blocking calls that fail authentication. “We expect that most providers will not want to block calls by default. Instead, we find that providers would rather give their customers the choice,” TransNexus commented: “A hospital or health clinic will generally answer all calls no matter what. They do not want to miss calls that might be very important.” NTCA reported on a meeting aides to Chairman Ajit Pai on challenges rural wireline carriers could encounter in implementing secure handling of asserted information using tokens (Shaken) and secure telephone identity revisited (Stir) technologies, another NPRM focus.