Carriers Can Now Block Robocalls By Default

A declaratory ruling was circulated by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai last month which, if adopted, would provide carriers with the approval to develop new tools to block unwanted robocalls by default. The proposal was to be considered by the Federal Communications Commission at its June 6th meeting. It voted in its favor unanimously.

The FCC’s vote is meant to allow carriers to block robocalls by default. Since nobody really likes receiving automated calls, this will enable the country’s major carriers to finally take strong action against them. The FCC has also voted to move forward on a proposed rule which will have carriers adopt the SHAKEN / STIR authentication system if they don’t do it themselves before the end of this year.

The blocking rule had been proposed by the chairman in order to provide carriers with certainty that automatic rule blocking was allowed. Carriers were previously reluctant to partake in the practice as they didn’t have clarity on whether automatic blocking was legal or not.

As a result, carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile provided robocall-blocking services that were opt-in. The FCC’s approval means that they can now begin to enable those services by default for all of their subscribers.

“The Commission approved a Declaratory Ruling to affirm that voice service providers may, as the default, block unwanted calls based on reasonable call analytics, as long as their customers are informed and have the opportunity to opt out of the blocking,” the FCC said in its press release.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: General
Tags: FCC, robocalls