WASHINGTON—CUNA is saying it believes the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should direct voice service providers to refrain from blocking “unsigned” calls under the SHAKEN/STIR framework until the framework has been fully implemented.
The trade association made the request in a comment letter to the FCC for the agency’s Third Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to regarding advanced methods to target and eliminate unlawful robocalls.
“Requiring providers to quickly unblock legal calls is necessary because the Commission has no authority to authorize the blocking of legal communications,” the letter reads. “The FCC should permit voice service providers to block only calls that have not been properly authenticated under the framework or authenticated, but the provider has concluded with a high degree of certainty that the call was placed illegally.”
Avoiding Labels
The letter goes on to state the FCC should discourage voice service providers from labeling calls as “debt collector.” Unlike the call labels of “spam” and “nuisance” — which describe illegally placed calls — servicing and collections-related calls are lawful and beneficial to consumers, CUNA noted.
The FCC's proposed “Critical Calls List” should include numbers from fraud alerts, data breach notifications, remediation messages, utility outage notifications, product recall notices, prescription notices, and mortgage servicing calls required by Federal or State law, CUNA said.
In assessing the effectiveness of voice service providers’ solutions to the problem of illegal automated calls, CUNA said it believes the FCC should measure and report annually on the number of calls that providers have blocked erroneously.