The House is considering a bill that would allow companies to make robo-calls to people’s cellphones.
The House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Communications and Technology held a hearing on Friday to discuss the Mobile Informational Call Act of 2011, a bill sponsored by Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) that would loosen restrictions on telemarketing calls to cellphones.
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), enacted in 1991, prohibits automated dialing and prerecorded voice message calls to mobile phones.
Terry says his bill is a badly-needed update to that law and would only allow calls for “informational purposes” and only to people who opt-in to receiving them. He said it would allow companies to quickly notify consumers if their flight is delayed, a product is recalled or their credit card information has been stolen.
Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), the subcommittee chairman, noted that technology has changed dramatically since the Telephone Consumer Protection Act was first enacted.
“Back then, the only person with a cell phone was Gordon Gecko,” he said, referring to Michael Douglas’s infamous character in the 1987 film Wall Street. “Today, many American households have given up the landline and rely exclusively on wireless service. Back then, wireless customers paid higher per-minute rates to receive calls; now, most consumers have buckets of minutes so that receiving an additional call costs them nothing. Given these changes to the market, now seems like a good time to revisit some of the rules the TCPA put in place.”
But Walden said he has no intention of unleashing telemarketers on unsuspecting wireless consumers.
“I think we can all agree that any legislation should not subject consumers to unwanted telephone solicitations,” he said.
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4 Responses
No one wants to be bothered by telemarketers. Companies place ads in local newspapers. If we want their services WE will call them!
This would be a bad idea. There might be some emergency calls that should be allowed but otherwise it would open the door to more commercial junk calls
Not only should the ban on robo calls be banned to mobile phones, they shouldn’t even be allowed to landlines. I agree totally with number 1. I get these calls 3 or 4 times a day and they are very annoying. Anyone who responds positively to one of these calls is a fool.
I still keep a land line (for international calls and faxes) I still get tons of uinwanted telemarketer calls.
At least I don’t pay for them.
On my cell, I would be charged minutes for these nusaince calss. I definitely do not want that.