OTTAWA – The CRTC is stepping up its fight against unwanted telemarketing calls by proposing universal call blocking for “blatantly illegitimate” phone numbers.
The Commission defined blatantly illegitimate numbers as those where the calling number is the same as the called telephone number; numbers spoofed to be local calls when they’re actually long-distance numbers; and numbers that do not conform to the to the North American Numbering Plan (NANP), i.e., are non-dialable telephone numbers like 000-000-0000.
The regulator issued a call for comments Thursday on a proposal that would require all Canadian telecommunications service providers to implement the technology within nine months following a CRTC directive.
It also requested that parties to this proceeding provide detailed comments on:
– mitigation measures that will ensure that any unintended consequences are appropriately managed;
– notification measures that could include such things as (i) notification to customers of the pending implementation of call blocking so that they can take steps to ensure their calls are not inadvertently blocked, (ii) notifications to callers that their calls have been blocked at a network level, and (iii) other notification requirements;
– disclosure measures that could include informing called parties that callers to them have been blocked at a network level and the information that will be provided to them via the disclosure or other notification requirements;
– redress mechanisms to prevent and remediate unintended consequences when universal blocking is deployed; and
– approaches and methodologies to be used for monitoring the effectiveness of universal blocking and the effectiveness of measures to mitigate the potential impact on legitimate callers.
Comments are due before December 18, 2017.
