Issue
Will legislation be enacted to prohibit telephone solicitors from purposely interfering with Caller ID services?

Importance
An extraordinary, perhaps impossible, burden would be placed on the teleservices industry if businesses were to be required to display a name and number on consumer Caller ID boxes without regard to whether such a requirement was technically or financially feasible. Attempting to meet an unattainable standard would impose ruinous financial burdens on industry with a commensurate negative impact on employment and business income and taxes.

ATA Position
ATA does not oppose legislation that would prohibit telemarketers from deliberately blocking Caller ID services. Legitimate businesses want the consumer to know who they are. Only unethical persons would deliberately seek to block the Caller ID signal for purposes of deception or to mislead consumers.

ATA opposes legislation that would mandate that every telemarketing call display a number on Caller ID boxes as this is technologically impossible given the limitations inherent in current state-of-the-art common carrier equipment.

ATA supports a federally mandated study of the technological issues and costs involved with developing the capability to display Caller ID information in every region of the country.

Background
Currently, neither the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) nor the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) require telemarketers to have a name and number appear on Caller ID when a sales call is placed to a consumer, nor does either act prohibit any business from purposely circumventing Caller ID systems. Indeed, the FCC required such capability when approving the marketing of Caller ID services in order to safeguard the privacy of consumers.

The impetus for this type of legislation stems from the inability of common carrier equipment to transmit the Caller ID signal over T1 trunk lines and different switches between the various telephone companies in different regions of the country. This typically results in a Caller ID display of "unavailable" or "out of area." There is an assumption on the part of many consumers that such displays involving business calls are the deliberate result of interference with the Caller ID signal to mask the identity of the caller.

Federal legislation has been introduced in the 107th Congress to address these concerns. This legislation would prohibit deliberate interference with Caller ID signals and would require the signal to display the name of the seller, the name on whose behalf the call is being made, and a telephone number that the consumer can call to be placed on a do-not-call list. No infraction is held to occur, however, if the signal cannot be displayed due to equipment limitations of the common carrier and the business has made no attempt to deliberately interfere with the signal. The legislation would also mandate an FCC study to determine telephone network capabilities in transmitting this signal information and assess what changes would be required. A similar version of this legislation in the 106th Congress passed the House by a 420-0 vote.

A Senate version would simply require the signal to be displayed in all circumstances, regardless of the technical feasibility or cost associated with such a requirement.

At the state level, sixteen states have enacted Caller ID legislation. They typically mirror the federal proposal in that they prohibit deliberate interference with the Caller ID signal. Non-display due to equipment deficiencies is not a violation of these statutes.

• Arkansas
  
• Georgia
  
• Idaho
  
• Illinois
  
• Indiana
  
• Kansas
  
• Kentucky
  
• Louisiana
  
• Michigan
  
• Nevada
  
• New Hampshire
  
• New York
  
• Oklahoma
  
• Tennessee
  
• Texas
  
• Utah

<Back to Issue Summaries>