In a unanimous vote, the Federal Communications Commission this week adopted new rules supported by the American Bankers Association that would combat illegal calls. The order requires all voice service providers in the call pathway to block calls that are highly likely to be illegal based on a “reasonable do-not-originate” list. Prior FCC rules required only “gateway” providers — providers accepting call traffic from abroad — to block calls based on a reasonable DNO list.
ABA had expressed support for the then-proposed rules in an earlier letter sent to the FCC.
“Over the past two years, ABA — joined by other trade associations — has sounded the alarm regarding criminals impersonating banks by illegally ‘spoofing’ bank phone numbers,” the association said. “ABA remains committed to stopping criminals who seek to defraud consumers, but our members and we cannot achieve this goal alone.”
ABA also expressed support for the provision in the draft order that would require voice service providers exclusively to use “SIP Code 603+” to communicate to the caller that its call was blocked in the network based on analytics. Voice service providers currently use a separate SIP Code — unenhanced SIP Code 603 — for this purpose, even though that code could signal network-level blocking or that the recipient declined the call.
