FCC to Take Stronger Robocall Enforcement Steps: Carr
The FCC’s newly launched Consumer Protection and Accessibility Advisory Committee (CPAAC) will focus on two particularly pressing consumer issues: promoting accessibility in modern communications and “the scourge of illegal robocalls,” Chairman Brendan Carr said Wednesday. Speaking at the inaugural meeting of what he called the "renamed and refocused" advisory group, Carr promised increased FCC enforcement efforts aimed at illegal robocalls, including "actions that effectively prohibit voice service providers from connecting or maintaining their connections" to U.S. telephone networks.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
"If carriers aren't doing their part" to mitigate robocalls, "they are not going to be able to do business in this country very long," Carr said. "More vigorous" FCC enforcement might particularly target carriers doing insufficient proactive mitigation of robocalls. 

Robocalls are “an all-too-common frustration” for American households and are often used to defraud, he said. But while both the agency and consumers "are fed up," there's no silver bullet solution. He said the FCC is "reinvigorating [its] work at every single point in the call cycle of robocalls," which includes trying to stop the origination of illegal robocalls by making it harder to access numbering resources. The FCC is also pushing carriers to block more calls before they reach consumers and trying to provide consumers with more tools to screen calls, he said. Commission work accelerating the IP transition has the added benefit of making it harder for robocallers to mask their identity, Carr noted.
The chairman also said a CPAAC working group will be charged with evaluating the FCC's robocall mitigation efforts and looking into conditions that contribute to the problem.
Pointing to the rapid changes in technology, Carr said another CPAAC working group will focus on how technology shifts are affecting the disability community and where FCC rules might need changes to reflect that new landscape.
CPAAC combines the Consumer Advisory and Disability Advisory committees. Ed Bartholme, Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau chief, said both groups in the past have provided the FCC with valuable input on numerous issues. CPAAC "is a bit of a rebrand" but also reflects a return to the agency's initial charter for its first federal advisory committee 25 years ago, the Consumer and Disability Telecommunications Advisory Committee.
Given the important role that communication services play in modern life, "we can't allow anyone to be left behind," FCC Commissioner Olivia Trusty told committee members. Making those services universally available requires them to be usable by everyone, including people with disabilities, she said. Universal access also requires protecting consumers from illegal robocalls, which can undermine trust in communications, Trusty added. Commissioner Anna Gomez also addressed committee members.
In addition, Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau disability rights office staffers at the meeting discussed the office’s focus areas and the agency’s accessibility resources, while staff from the bureau’s consumer affairs and outreach division laid out what it does.