Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, on Monday reintroduced a bill to prevent “abusive” robocall practices and to give the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) increased authority to fight robocalls.
The Stopping Bad Robocalls Act was introduced in the previous Congress but failed to get out of the Energy and Commerce committee.
“It is increasingly annoying to repeatedly get unwanted calls from people you don’t know and don’t want to talk to,” Rep. Pallone said in announcing the current bill. Pallone cited a report by Hiya, a spam-monitoring service, highlighting an increase in robocalls by 46 percent from 2017 to 2018.
“Despite previous efforts like the Do Not Call Registry, robocalls are still on the rise,” Rep. Pallone added.
The reintroduced bill would allow consumers to opt out of robocalls, ban more types of robocalls, require all calls to have caller ID information, and lengthen the statute of limitations from one to four years for those that violate robocall regulations.
