Back in 2012, Congress directed the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) to create a special do-not-call registry to protect 911 call centers from Robocalls. The system has never been implemented partly because of the security issues that arise when the FCC and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) began to see the feasibility of the idea. In particular, there are worries that bad actors can use the registry to flood the call center with automatic calls and thus prevent them from helping people in need.
Fast forward to the present and the FCC said it had a better idea of how to achieve the goals assigned by Congress. On Thursday, the agency proposed a new rule that would need a telephone company to block Robocall made for the facility. As Chairman of the FCC acting Jessica Rosenworcel shows, the advantage of this approach is that it will limit access to the Do-Not-Call registry to a group of verified companies and telephone operators. And by limiting access to the list, the FCC and FTC can put better protection to protect it.
With today’s decision, the FCC is not ready to implement the system, but what it does to do feedback before moving forward. “We believe this is a promising approach, but we want to get this correctly,” Rosenworcel said.