Rosenworcel Plans May 20 Votes on Cutting Some ICS Rates

FCC acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel plans a May 20 vote on cutting some inmate calling service rates. She also plans for commissioners to vote then on a proposal on mandating actions to help prevent some robocalls, which smaller providers would need to take sooner than anticipated.

Commissioners would "vote to lower interstate phone rates by 33-to-42% for the vast majority of incarcerated people and also limit international rates for the first time," blogged Rosenworcel Wednesday. "People in U.S. jails and prisons and their loved ones often have to pay egregiously high rates to talk on the phone." Representatives for some inmate calling service providers didn't comment right away.

After the FCC gave smaller providers two additional years to adopt caller identification authentication technology, there's "new evidence that an increasing quantity of illegal robocalls are originating with a subset of small voice providers," Rosenworcel wrote. Her proposal would "shorten this extension for some companies who are likely to be the source of illegal robocalls." Most big voice providers have until June to implement secure telephone identity revisited and signature-based handling of asserted information using tokens (Stir/Shaken) standards, the blog post noted.

Telecom and cable associations didn't comment right away on the Stir/Shaken plans.