Court Rules In Favor of TCPA Defendant Claiming Previous Subscriber’s Consent
A district court ruled that a caller could reasonably rely on the consent of a previous subscriber when calling a number that had since been recycled to another user.
FCC
TRACED Act Signed Into Law
President Donald Trump signed the TRACED Act into law on December 30, 2019. The bill had passed both houses of Congress with near-unanimous, bipartisan support.
Pallone-Thune TRACED Act Passes Senate, Awaits President’s Signature
The Senate passed the Pallune-Thune TRACED Act by voice vote on Thursday. It has previously passed the House of Representatives by a count of 417-3. President Trump is expected to sign it into law soon.
FCC Delays Implementation of Recycled Number Database Until 2020
In December 2018, the FCC announced a plan to create a reassigned number database. Callers would be able to scrub their number lists against this database in order to remove any numbers that have been reassigned to new users, thus decreasing the possibility of incurring Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) violations by calling these new users.
Verzion to Automatically Enroll Customers in Robocall Blocking Feature
Verizon announced this week that they would begin automatically enrolling some of their users in their Call Filter program, which blocks robocalls.
Appeals Court Rules That TCPA Regulations Apply To Hybrid VoIP-Cellular Telephone Numbers
The First Circuit Court of Appeals delivered a ruling that has enormous consequences for TCPA compliance with regards to hybrid VoIP-Cellular services.
Phone carriers can now block robocalls by default
Today, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved a Declaratory Ruling that will allow phone service providers to block robocalls by default. Reasonable call analytics will be used by the services providers to determine if default blocking will be allowed.
FCC Proposes Robocall Blocking by Default
On May 15, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) submitted a proposal that would allow phone carriers to block unwanted robocalls to their customers by default. Most phone service providers offer call-blocking as an opt-in service, but this new initiative would allow robocall blocking by phone carriers without opt-in.
FCC Chairman Pai Announces SHAKEN/STIR Robocall Summit
July 11th, 2019
The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) Chairman Ajit Pai announced that he will host a summit on July 11th, 2019 to examine telco companies progress in implementing the SHAKEN (Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs) and STIR (Secure Telephony Identity Revisited) caller ID authentication standards.
FCC's Reassigned Number Database Becomes Final Rule
The FCC's long awaited reassigned number database has officially become a final rule. In December of last year, the FCC announced its intention to create this database, which will, "contain the most recent permanent disconnection date for toll free numbers and for each number allocated to or ported to each provider that receives North American Numbering Plan U.S.