A month after writing to 14 different carriers seeking information on their plans to roll out automatic call blocking services for calls deemed to be robocalls, Geoffrey Starks, one of the five commissioners of the Federal Communications Commission has taken the unusual step of publishing all of the responses, most likely because he was less-than-pleased with what he heard.
Starks was following up on a Declaratory Ruling the FCC approved in June that allows carriers to automatically block calls their systems deem to be robocalls, without notifying customers. The carriers will have to give customers the opportunity to opt-out of the service, should they so choose. The carriers will also be able to offer customers tools to block calls from anyone not in their phones’ contact lists or not on an approved “white list.”
“Despite historically clamoring for new tools, it does not appear that all providers have acted with haste to deploy opt-out robocall blocking services,” Starks said in a news release that accompanied the responses from the carriers. “The Commission spoke clearly: we expect opt-out call blocking services to be offered to consumers for free. Reviewing the substance of these responses, by and large, carriers’ plans for these services are far from clear.”
Starks was seeking answers to three questions from the carriers: whether they offer customers default call blocking services on an informed opt-out basis, describe how they intend to inform consumers about this service, and if they do not currently plan to offer customers default call blocking services on an informed opt-out basis, to explain why.
Most of the carriers detailed the steps they have taken to detect and eliminate robocalls while also applauding the FCC for the steps it has taken from a regulatory perspective to curb robocalls.
Each of the 14 responses filed by the carriers — AT&T, Bandwidth.com, CenturyLink, Charter, Comcast, Cox, Frontier, Google, Sprint, TDS, T-Mobile, US Cellular, Verizon, and Vonage — are available by clicking here
