May 22, 2017–The FCC today released a proposal adopted on May 19 by its Consumer Advisory Committee recommending a number of steps the agency should take to combat robocalls (TR Daily, May 19).

The CAC recommended the following 11 FCC actions: (1) initiating and prosecuting “enforcement actions against known robocallers who are violating the law”; (2) ensuring “a system of effective enforcement, with appropriately escalating penalties against repeat violators”; (3) enhancing “its current online Unwanted Calls Consumer Guide to consolidate best practices and tips currently shared by other government agencies, and to reflect new guidance and resources emerging from industry’s work on this issue”; (4) ensuring “that the FCC’s educational resources and complaint forms are available in accessible formats, and languages other than English where appropriate”; (5) developing “educational materials specific to the impact of robocalls on consumers with disabilities”; (6) simplifying “the consumer complaint filing process for unwanted calls”; (7) creating “a separate intake portal for unwanted-call complaints”; (8) incorporating “educational information into the response sent by the FCC to consumers who submit an unwanted-call complaint”; (9) developing “an app that can be used by consumers with mobile devices to quickly file complaints for unwanted calls received on their device”; (10) building “upon the existing Memorandum of Understanding with the FTC by exploring the value and feasibility of creating a co-hosted single education and complaint portal for the issue”; and (11) exploring “making complaint data available to third parties on a near-real time basis in order to maximize its usefulness for companies whose robocall analytics engines use the data to identify telephone numbers that may be candidates for blocking or providing alerts to consumers.”- Paul Kirby, paul.kirby@wolterskluwer.com

Courtesy TRDaily