House discusses mobile telemarketing bill

The House Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications and Technology discussed updating a bill prohibiting mobile telemarketing to allow businesses to make robo-calls to mobile phones in certain cases.

In his opening statement at the hearing, Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) said that the bill needed to evolve with current technology. Under the current law, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), businesses are not allowed to use automatic dialing equipment and prerecorded messages for calls to wireless phones. Chairman Walden argued that the law is too prohibitive. The Mobile Informational Call Act of 2011 would define whether the law prohibits consumers from receiving important automated calls, offering the example of low-balance or fraud alerts from financial institutions. Still, it’s not clear if the bill would be able to distinguish between helpful alerts and other telemarketing calls. Lawmakers in the hearing were particularly concerned with what constituted “prior express consent” to receive the calls. Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), who was influential in passing the TCPA, asked if businesses would be able to reach consumers who had, at some point, given their mobile numbers to companies such as pizza-delivery services. Consumer groups have said they opposed the measure.