Voglio sapere a riguardo di…

khammond on DSKJM1Z7X2PROD with RULES

74374

Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 248 / Thursday, December 30, 2021 / Rules and Regulations
highly likely to be illegal without consumer consent, e.g., calls purporting to be from invalid, unallocated, or unused numbers, and calls likely to be unwanted based on reasonable analytics designed to identify unwanted calls.
The Commission adopted a safe harbor from liability under the Communications Act and the Commissions rules for erroneous call blocking, in order to protect voice service providers from liability for unintended blocking of wanted calls where terminating voice service providers block calls thought to be illegal or unwanted based on reasonable analytics that include caller ID
authentication information and where the consumer is given the opportunity to opt out, if this blocking is managed with human oversight and network monitoring sufficient to ensure that blocking is working as intended. In addition, voice service providers must take steps to stop illegal traffic on their networks and assist the Commission, law enforcement, and the Traceback Consortium in tracking down callers that make such calls.
3. As part of the call blocking and safe harbor rules, the Commission had required voice service providers blocking calls to provide immediate notification to callers of such blocking through the use of specified SIP Codes.
SIP is the signaling protocol used in IP
networks enabling calls to be made and received by end-users and includes a SIP request and a SIP response. The SIP
response is a three-digit code that indicates the status of the SIP request.
The Commission specified that terminating voice service providers that block calls on an IP network return SIP
Code 607 or 608, as appropriate. SIP
Code 607 is used when the called party indicates a call is unwanted. SIP Code 608 indicates a call was rejected by an intermediary, such as an analytics engine, as opposed to by the called party. Because SIP Codes are not available on non-IP networks, the Commission required use of ISUP code 21 for calls blocked on a TDM network.
4. The Commission further required all voice service providers in the call path to transmit the appropriate SIP
Codes to the origination point of the call and set a deadline of January 1, 2022 for voice service providers to comply with the immediate notification requirements. The Commission required that any terminating voice service provider that blocks calls on an opt-in or opt-out basis provide, on the request of the subscriber to a particular number, a list of all calls intended for that number that the voice service provider or its designee has blocked.

VerDate Sep<11>2014

16:53 Dec 29, 2021

Jkt 256001

5. In the Order on Reconsideration, the Commission granted, in part, the petition for reconsideration filed by USTelecom and stated that allowing terminating voice service providers to utilize SIP Code 603 during the finalization of and transition to SIP
Codes 607 and 608 strikes a reasonable balance between ensuring that voice service providers have the technical ability to provide immediate notification to callers and ensuring that callers have a uniform means of receiving such notifications. The Commission amended the immediate notification requirements to allow terminating voice service providers operating IP networks to use SIP Codes 603, 607, or 608 to comply with the rule. The Commission granted USTelecoms request to allow use of SIP
Code 603 as an alternative to SIP Codes 607 and 608 and denied USTelecoms broader request for general flexibility with regard to providing blocking notification.
6. The Commission also granted USTelecoms request to confirm that immediate notification to callers is necessary only for calls blocked pursuant to any analytics programs. The Commission stated that a voice service provider must comply with the immediate notification requirement whenever it blocks calls based on analytics, regardless of whether such blocking is done with consumer opt in or opt out, or at the network level without consumer consent.
7. The Commission denied USTelecoms request to exempt voice service providers from the immediate notification requirements if they are temporarily unable to for technical reasons and concluded that under such circumstances they may seek a waiver from the Commission and such waivers will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
8. The Commission also clarified that the requirement that any terminating voice service provider that blocks on an opt-in or opt-out basis must provide, on the request of the subscriber to a particular number, a list of calls intended for that number that the voice service provider or its designee has blocked applies only to blocking performed pursuant to opt-in or opt-out analytics programs, rather than to subscriber-initiated features such as white lists, black lists, Do Not Disturb, call rejection, and line-level blocking.
The Commission explained that because the purpose of the blocked-calls-list requirement is to ensure effective redress to consumers, there is no reason to apply such a requirement to situations where providers are not
PO 00000

Frm 00022

Fmt 4700

Sfmt 4700

required to allow consumers to opt out and this redress requirement is, thus, inapplicable. As a result, the blockedcalls-list requirement does not apply to such blocking programs.
9. The Commission denied USTelecoms request to confirm that originating voice service providers can determine with their enterprise customers how those customers will be notified about blocking of their calls by downstream providers and that notifications to enterprise customers are not covered by the Commissions notification requirement. All voice service providers in the call path are required to transmit the appropriate response codes to the origination point of the call. The Commission clarified that an originating voice service provider must transmit the appropriate response code to the origination point of the call, which means that the code must be made available to callers that are able to receive it. The Commission stated that the focus of section 10b of the TRACED Act, codified at 47 U.S.C.
227j, and the Commissions rules implementing this provision, is on transparency for the caller, not transparency for an originating provider.
Thus, originating voice service providers must, at a minimum, transmit the appropriate response code to the caller.
10. In the Waiver Order, the Commission explained that, because the amendment to the immediate notification requirement in the Order on Reconsideration may not be published in the Federal Register before January 1, 2022, the Commission grants, pursuant to section 1.3 of the Commissions rules, a waiver of 64.1200k9i to allow voice service providers terminating a call on an IP network to use SIP Code 603, 607, or 608 from January 1, 2022
until the effective date of the amendments to section 64.1200k9 of the Commissions rules adopted in the Order on Reconsideration.
11. The Commission found that good cause exists to allow voice service providers to use SIP Code 603 beginning on January 1, 2022. Granting this waiver is necessary to avoid a situation where a terminating voice service provider on an IP network may be unable to return SIP Code 607 or 608 beginning on January 1, 2022 for the reasons discussed in the Order on Reconsideration and thus, absent a waiver, could choose not to block calls rather than to block calls in a manner that does not comply with 64.1200k9i of the Commissions rules.

E:FRFM30DER1.SGM

30DER1