Seven members of the Senate Commerce Committee — including Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) — this week urged the Federal Communications Commission to issue new rules to ensure that consumers can receive important communications from their banks and other businesses. The letter was submitted as the FCC considers issuing new Telephone Consumer Protection Act rules after a federal appellate court in March struck down two key aspects of the FCC’s prior rules.
“The FCC must make it more workable for legitimate businesses to stay in communication with consumers in a timely and effective manner,” the senators wrote. “It is imperative that the FCC develop an updated TCPA framework that both protects consumers and provides those calling in good faith with a reasonable means of communicating with their customers.”
The senators urged the FCC to issue a new interpretation of an “automatic telephone dialing system” that would limit TCPA restrictions only to dialing equipment that generates telephone numbers in random or sequential order. The American Bankers Association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and several other industry trade groups have asked the FCC to adopt this definition in a recently filed joint petition.
