Telecommunication

"Robocalls represent the biggest category of complaint that we get from consumers," said Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai. He says the FCC is empowering cell carriers to block texts and calls that look suspicious. They are also slapping scammers with hefty fines. "The largest fines in the FCC's history have been imposed over the last 18 months to go after robocallers who are using this as a business model," said Chairman Pai. Outgoing Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) is working to get the FCC more resources.

On the anniversary of the repeal of network neutrality, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai now proposes another goodie for carriers – classifying both short codes and text messages as Title I “information service” rather than a Title II telecommunications service. As this is even more ridiculous than 2017’s reclassification of broadband as Title I, the draft Order relies primarily on the false claim that classifying text messaging as Title I is an anti-robocall measure.

There’s a lot more behind the news that the Federal Communications Commission plans to increase the minimum broadband speed target in rural areas that wasn’t detailed in FCC Chairman Pai’s recent blog post about current commission initiatives. The plan to increase the minimum broadband speed is just one aspect of a 125-page order that the FCC will consider next month. Also detailed in the order: a plan to make new offers of model-based A-CAM broadband support to rural rate-of-return (ROR) carriers.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that the following items are tentatively on the agenda for the Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Wednesday, December 12, 2018:

What will wake America up from its Thanksgiving day food coma? Here's the Federal Communications Commission’s December 2018 open meeting agenda:

I want to give your readers an update on the latest move by AT&T to push people off the traditional home phone service they have relied upon for decades. This past Sept, we began to field calls from worried landline customers, including seniors on fixed incomes, who were among an estimated 5,300 customers to receive a letter from AT&T with the blunt headline: “Your Lifeline discount ends November 20, 2018.” The letter referred to the federal Lifeline program, which offers a monthly credit of up to $11.75 for qualifying low-income customers.

For Americans who can afford reliable phone service, help surviving a natural disaster is just a phone call away. Individuals in the path of a storm can dial 2-1-1 to get answers to non-emergency questions such as the location of shelters and evacuation areas. After the storm has passed, 2-1-1 provides access to disaster resources including food and housing assistance, crisis counseling, and health and human services.

Washington (DC) has tried several tactics to stem the tide of automated calls, from passing the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) in 1991 to establishing the Do Not Call Registry in 2003. The Federal Communications Commission regularly hands down multimillion-dollar penalties against individual robocallers. But the calls keep coming, and the problem has only gotten worse. The issue is the ease of becoming a robocaller. Anyone with a minor amount of technical ability can run their own system by downloading the relevant software. 

More than 1 million veterans rely on the Lifeline program connecting low-income households to essential services like health care, job opportunities and public safety. Unfortunately, proposed changes from the Federal Communications Commission threaten to undermine this vital program and hurt those who depend on it most. About 40 million people are eligible for Lifeline and roughly 10 million of those have enrolled. Of the enrollees, around 1.3 million (or more than 10 percent) are veterans or disabled veterans living near or below the poverty line.

The Federal Communications Commission sent letters to voice providers, calling on them to assist industry efforts to trace scam robocalls that originate on or pass through their networks. These letters, written by FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief Rosemary Harold and Chief Technology Officer Eric Burger, were sent to voice providers that are not participating in these “traceback” efforts, including those the FCC has encouraged to do more to guard against illegal traffic.