On March 16th, the FCC Commissioners held their monthly open meeting, and some of what was covered will hopefully be of interest to you.

One item involved the FCC adopting rules requiring phone companies to start blocking  suspected text message scams similarly to how they're already required to block suspected robocall scams.

The adopted rules also intend to clarify that in addition to not receiving unsolicited sales messages via phone call, numbers on the Do Not Call Registry shouldn't receive unsolicited marketing messages via text message either.

 

Another topic was the ongoing fight against robocalls using falsified or "spoofed" Caller ID information.

At the meeting, rules were adopted intended to toughen the requirement for phone companies to prove that a phone call really is coming from who it says it is.

 

A third topic brought up was a proposal to expand audio description requirements.

Basically, it's the counterpart to closed captioning.  In the same way closed captioning lets people with impaired hearing know what is being said on screen, audio description describes what is being shown on screen for people with vision impairments.

The FCC has been slowly rolling out these requirements, starting in the 60 largest TV markets and working their way down.  Audio description is expected to be in place in the top 100 markets by the end of 2023, and completion (all 210 markets) expected by 2035.

You can read the actual text of the proposal here.

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