In a letter sent to the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday, the American Bankers Association expressed support for the FCC’s decision to schedule a vote on March 26 on whether it should issue a notice of proposed rulemaking that would strengthen the agency’s numbering policies to combat illegal calls.
Among other steps, the commission proposes to impose restrictions on the resale of phone numbers and to seek comment on how it should address number “cycling,” which is the use by a caller of large quantities of telephone numbers on a rotating or single-use basis to avoid detection.
ABA also applauded the FCC’s recent action to mandate U.S. voice service providers and intermediate providers block calls from Belthrough for violating the agency’s rules against illegal calls, and to remove the company from the Robocall Mitigation Database, which lists all voice service providers that are authorized to transit calls.
ABA previously provided to the FCC data demonstrating that ‘fly-by-night’ originating voice service providers like Belthrough are able to establish themselves and, within weeks, originate hundreds of millions of illegal calls.
To demonstrate the public’s strong support for FCC action to combat illegal calls, ABA shared with the FCC the results of a recent poll conducted by Morning Consult, which ABA unveiled at its Washington Summit, that found 77% of consumers said they support regulatory action that requires telecommunications providers to do more to authenticate the identity of a caller and prevent spoofed caller IDs.
