Joint Trades’ Letter Urging FCC to Protect Calls Placed by Banks and Other Legitimate Businesses

Marlene H. Dortch, Secretary
Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street, SW
Room TW-A325
Washington, DC 20554

Dear Ms. Dortch:

On March 2, 2020, representatives from the American Bankers Association, American Association of Healthcare Administrative Management, American Financial Services Association, ACA International, Consumer Bankers Association, Credit Union National Association, Edison Electric Institute, Mortgage Bankers Association, National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions, and National Council of Higher Education Resources (collectively, the Associations) met with staff from the Federal Communication Commission’s Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau and the Wireline Competition Bureau. A full list of meeting participants is provided in Appendix A.

During the meeting, the Associations expressed support for the Commission’s goal to reduce illegal automated calls and acknowledged the myriad efforts by companies that provide voice telephony services (Voice Service Providers or Providers) to help combat this problem. We also noted that the Commission has received numerous reports in the record of erroneous blocking of lawful calls. These reports include important and time-sensitive communications, such as:

• Emergency calls from public safety answering points;
• Anti-fraud messages for “two-factor authentication requests”;
• “Critical calls” relating to “life and safety”;
• “Security-related messages,” including real-time notifications about incidents that require rapid response; and
• Research calls on behalf of the Center for Disease Control (CDC).

The Commission has statistical evidence corroborating these first-hand examples in the form of a study conducted by Number Sentry in February 2020. Number Sentry evaluated more than 220,000 outbound accounts receivable calls placed by 561 telephone numbers over a three-week study period and found that:

• More than 21% of lawful calls from legitimate callers were blocked;
• More than 25% of the calls that were not blocked were nevertheless labeled; and
• More than 24% of labeled calls were mislabeled.

Consistent with the Number Sentry study, the Associations expressed concern that outbound calling numbers used to place important—and often time-sensitive—non-telemarketing calls were being mislabeled as “Potential Spam,” “Suspected Spam,” “Spam Number,” “Nuisance Label,” or other derogatory labels, and that calls from those numbers were being blocked.

When a call is incorrectly labeled, the customer is discouraged from answering the phone and may decide to block the call (and subsequent calls from the same number) based on the erroneous label. Thus, a mislabeled call can be tantamount to a blocked call. In other instances, the customer’s Voice Service Provider or that Provider’s third-party call-blocking service provider may impose the blocking directly, based on an incorrect understanding of the origin of the call. When outbound calling numbers used by legitimate businesses are mislabeled and calls from those numbers are blocked, consumers are harmed because they may not receive lawful calls affecting their health, safety, or financial well-being. These calls include, for example, safety alerts, fraud alerts, data security breach notifications, product recall notices, healthcare and prescription reminders, and power outage updates. It is critical that these calls be completed without delay.

To address the mislabeling of outbound calling numbers and the erroneous blocking of lawful calls placed from those numbers, the Associations urged the Commission to require that Voice Service Providers take the following steps. Providers should implement these requirements as part of any program to block or label calls, but at a minimum, any safe harbor that the Commission grants a Provider for the blocking of lawful calls should be conditioned on the Provider’s implementation of these requirements.

• Voice Service Providers should be required to provide notice to the caller when the Provider or its third-party call-blocking partner has placed a derogatory label on the business’ outbound calling number or blocked calls placed from that number. The Associations appreciate that the Commission has “encourage[d] voice service providers that block calls to develop a mechanism for notifying callers that their calls have been blocked.” However, Providers have not uniformly implemented notification mechanisms, nor do Providers consistently take other steps to notify legitimate businesses when businesses’ outbound calling numbers are labeled in a derogatory manner. Without notification that numbers have been mislabeled or calls from those numbers blocked, callers cannot take corrective action. Instead, the caller typically learns about the mislabeling or blocking when it receives a busy tone (or other outcome that suggests the call was not completed) or the call recipient brings the mislabeling to the caller’s attention. In these cases, the caller must investigate the source of the blocking at its time and expense, which delays removal of the erroneous block.
• The call blocking notification should be made through the use of an intercept message or response code that conveys that the call has been blocked, as the Commission suggested. One mechanism that has been widely suggested is a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) error code, the technical specifications for which have already been developed. As many commenters have urged previously, these notifications should also include a phone number or website address for the caller to seek information about why the call was blocked and how to prevent such blocking in the future.9 The intercept process also should identify the Voice Service Provider that has blocked the call and provide a means for the caller to contact that Provider.
• Voice Service Providers must offer an effective and prompt redress mechanism. This requirement would implement Congress’ direction in the recently enacted TRACED Act that the Commission “ensure robocall blocking services . . . are provided with transparency and effective redress options for . . . callers . . . and at no additional charge . . . for resolving complaints related to erroneously blocked calls.” When a caller learns of an erroneous block through a SIP code or other notification and then contacts the Voice Service Provider, the Provider should explain how its algorithm resulted in the blocking of the caller’s call so that the Provider can improve its analytics to avoid erroneous blocks in the future. The Commission also should require the removal an erroneous block within 24 hours of its identification at no charge to the caller. Voice Service Providers should also be required to provide a challenge mechanism that removes an inaccurate label or improper block on a caller’s number promptly, permanently, and without cost to the caller.
• The Commission should require Voice Service Providers to share information on phone numbers assigned to legitimate businesses that have been mislabeled or improperly blocked. Currently, when one Provider resolves its mislabeling of a business’ number or removes an erroneous block on calls from that number, the information typically is not shared with other Providers. Businesses and their customers would benefit if a Provider that mislabeled a number or erroneously blocked a call conveyed that information to other Providers so that the other Providers do not mislabel the number or inadvertently block calls from that number in the future. Moreover, legitimate callers currently must: (1) assign staff to identify all Providers and register the business’ outbound calling numbers with those Providers, or (2) hire costly vendors to perform this work. If Providers shared information on legitimate businesses’ phone numbers, callers would not need to take such burdensome steps to protect their outbound calling operations.
• Voice service providers should track and report to the Commission how many lawful calls they are mistakenly blocking and mislabeling. As evident in the Commission’s ongoing proceeding to collect information for the robocall report, it is difficult to craft sound policy without data regarding false positives and complaints. Voice Service Providers are in the best position to capture and report information about these metrics and should do so on a periodic basis. Voice Service Providers should also report the number of complaints from callers regarding over-blocking or mislabeling.

The Associations appreciate the Voice Service Providers’ efforts to reduce illegal automated calls and acknowledge the daunting technical and operational challenges that an error-free blocking and labeling regime will require. Nevertheless, callers and consumers are not receiving proper notice or procedural protections in connection with blocked or mislabeled calls. If left unchecked, these issues will have significant, negative impacts on consumers and the public switched telephone network. Accordingly, the Associations urge the Commission to adopt modest guardrails to minimize the incidence of mislabeling and over-blocking, especially as the Commission considers any safe harbor for the blocking of lawful calls. The measures we suggest will, in turn, ensure that consumers can receive important, time-sensitive communications without interruption while furthering the Commission’s important mission to eliminate illegal automated calls.

Respectfully submitted,

American Association of Healthcare Administrative Management
American Bankers Association
American Financial Services Association
ACA International
Consumer Bankers Association
Credit Union National Association
Edison Electric Institute
Mortgage Bankers Association
National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions
National Council of Higher Education Resources