The Federal Communications Commission yesterday announced that voice service providers must start reporting permanent disconnections of their subscribers starting on April 15 in the next step of the rollout of its reassigned numbers database.
Voice service providers with fewer than 100,000 domestic retail subscribers will have an additional six months — to October 15 — before they have to start reporting their permanent disconnections to the database.
The FCC has been working on a rule creating a reassigned numbers database for more than two years. The objective is to provide companies with information to help them make sure they are calling the individual they intend to reach. Knowing that a phone number has been reassigned can tell a company not to contact that number.
Voice service providers were told by the FCC to begin tracking the most recent date in which a phone number was disconnected last July.
Companies querying the database will receive one of three possible responses. “Yes” means the number being queried is in the FCC’s database and the date provided is the same as or before the permanent disconnect date for the number in the database; “No” means the number is in the database and the date submitted with the query is after the permanent disconnect date contained in the database; and “No Data” means no information about the number or is permanent disconnect date are available. Companies using the database will be eligible for a safe harbor if a “Yes” or “No” response is provided, but will not be eligible if a “No Data” response is returned.
The utility of the database for the accounts receivable management industry has been called into question, because it is not keeping track of the date a number was reassigned. New placements made to a collection agency do not always include the date that the last right-party contact was made, meaning the agency may not have any confidence in establishing a date in which the consumer was likely associated with that number.
