Industry answers the KYUP notice with one word: safe harbor

Comments on the FCC’s know-your-upstream-provider FNPRM closed August 10 in WC Docket 17-97 and CG Docket 17-59. CTIA, USTelecom, NCTA, ACA Connects, WISPA, the Voice on the Net Coalition, INCOMPAS and Bandwidth all filed, and they converged on the same ask.

USTelecom’s comments put it plainly: “providers that agree to adopt multistakeholder KYUP best practices should be afforded a safe harbor from enforcement of the Commission’s existing KYUP rule.” NCTA wants “a safe harbor for providers that follow a baseline set of procedures identified by the Commission.” CTIA gives it a section heading. VON asks for “flexible, risk-based KYUP requirements anchored by a technology-neutral safe harbor.”

A second group wants the obligation moved somewhere else entirely. USTelecom argues an improved Robocall Mitigation Database “would provide the Commission’s definitive judgment regarding whether a provider should be allowed in the ecosystem, eliminating the need for duplicative KYUP rules.” INCOMPAS and the Cloud Communications Alliance head a section “The Commission Should Assign KYUP Obligations to the RMD or Stand Up an Independent Entity.” Bandwidth agrees. The RMD proceeding, FCC 26-49, was released July 23 — two and a half weeks before these comments were due.

INCOMPAS supplies the sharpest line in the record: the proposals “represent an unprecedented delegation of federal enforcement authority to the private sector.” VON: “These duties rest solely with the Commission and cannot lawfully be delegated to unregulated third parties.”

The number driving the objections is in FNPRM ¶131 — a $2,500 per-call base forfeiture for KYUP failures. NCTA asks that any per-call forfeiture “be based on a negligence standard, rather than a strict liability standard.”

CTIA argues that codified practices “would risk providing a roadmap for bad actors to exploit.” The counter is already in the docket: Numeracle, the Industry Traceback Group, and a thirteen-member financial trade coalition led by the American Bankers Association all filed that flexibility has been tried. Reply comments are due September 8.