The Federal Communications Commission recently announced the agenda for its upcoming June 18 Open Meeting. The agenda includes a number of items on which the Commission is considering action. Of those items on the agenda, few are more important to many financial service companies than the Commission's focus on "Protecting Consumers Against Unwanted Robocalls."
According to the Commission's agenda for the meeting, the FCC will consider a Declaratory Ruling reaffirming the Telephone Consumer Protection Act's protections against "robocalls." The reaffirmation will include encouragement of "pro-consumer uses of robocall technology" and responding to a number of business requests for clarification of the TCPA's applicability.
In a previous blog post, we discussed several aspects of the TCPA that the FCC will consider at the Open Meeting. Some of the most pressing issues for businesses on the agenda include the manner in which a consumer may revoke his or her previous consent for a "robocall, clarification on the types of technology that the FCC considers "robocallers", and the applicability of the TCPA to calls to a recently reassigned cellular telephone number.
The FCC's focus on the TCPA has drawn significant attention from industry groups that use automated calls in many aspects of their businesses. For that reason, it is possible the FCC will follow a more deliberate process when drafting its Declaratory Ruling after the June 18 meeting. If the timing of previous FCC rulings is any guide, however, businesses may not need to wait long for an FCC decision on the TCPA. In 2015, the FCC has released numerous orders within days or weeks of the Open Meeting at which those proposed orders were discussed.
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