WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission declared the outage reporting requirements and the changes to the telemarketing rules to be in effect Dec. 30.
Under rules adopted in 2004, carriers must report service outages impacting at least 900,000 user minutes. The wireline industry has been subject to reporting in cases when 30,000 customers lose telephone service for at least 30 minutes since the early 1990s, but the wireless industry has expressed concern this metric is overly broad.
The FCC has released an electronic form for meeting the requirement.
Telemarketers wishing to take advantage of the FCC’s safe harbor provisions meant to protect telemarketers from unwittingly calling telephone users who have placed their phone number on the National Do-Not-Call Registry must now access the do-not-call list every 31 days instead of the previous three-month requirement. Telemarketers have only a 15-day grace period if they unwittingly call a mobile phone that has a number ported from a landline phone. It is against the law for telemarketers to use automated dialers to call mobile phones and telemarketers were concerned they could call a number they believed to be a landline number not knowing it had been ported. The FCC gave telemarketers 15 days to update their lists with information available from the porting administrator.
Finally, the FCC said wireless carriers must register all domain names used for text messaging and other services with them by Jan. 21 to prevent wireless consumers from receiving unwanted text message spam.
