Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has put into effect new rules that address the ever-growing robocall problem in the United States.
With these rules in place, you should see fewer of certain kinds of calls that are likely to be unlawful because they come from improper or invalid phone numbers, including those that do not or cannot, make outgoing calls.
Please see the new FCC rulings here:
WHEN WILL THIS GO INTO EFFECT AND WHAT CALLS ARE IMPACTED?
In accordance with these new FCC rules, CallTower will begin blocking the following types of calls on October 1, 2018.
- Unallocated: Any calls that contain a phone number in the Automatic Number Identification (ANI) in the from field that has not been assigned from the North American numbering plan.
- Alpha-Numeric: Any cal that contains letters and/or alpha-numerics in the ANI / from field.
- Invalid: Any call that contains a character string of digits or letters that does not fully comply with E.164 formatting and the Local Exchange Routing Guide (LERG). This includes ANI / from fields with all digits of the same number, or anything less than 10 valid digits assigned fro the North American Numbering Plan.
*The failure to include a valid ANI in the FROM field of the call violates the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP).
PLEASE NOTE: This change will not affect 9-1-1 calls.
WHAT DO I NEED TO DO?
CallTower has always required accurate 10-digit calling numbers on outbound calls but has never put rules in place to actively fail calls that do not meet this requirement. Starting October 1st, 2018, calls with invalid Caller ID numbers will be much more likely to fail.
If you have a CallTower SIP trunk, you are responsible for setting the correct Caller ID information on your PBX. You will need to ensure that you use valid 10-digit calling numbers when making outbound calls. If you are using another CallTower service that may be impacted, we will reach out to you prior to this October 1st, 2018, deadline to assist in the making adjustments.
Need more information, please reach out to our Account Management team at am@calltower.com or call (800)347-5444, option 2.
If you continue to receive unwanted robocalls please contact us to discuss additional robocall blocking measures that can be added to your account.