At this morning’s FCC’s Open Meeting on the agenda for the Commissioners was voting on the Report and Order and Further Notice of Posed Rulemaking for docket number 02-278, “Empowering Consumers to Block Robocalls and Robotexts”. Or in short, revocation of consent.

The proposed Report and Order circulated at the end of last month. With the Commissioner’s approval today, the following will likely be effective within 30 days after being published in the Federal Registry. At a high level the Report and Order will:

• Codify the Commission’s 2015 ruling that consumers can revoke consent under the TCPA through any reasonable means while providing additional clarification on what “reasonable” means in this context.
• Require that robocallers and robotexters honor do-not-call and consent revocation requests as soon as practicable, and no longer than 10 business days from receipt.
• Codify the Commission’s 2012 ruling which clarified that a one-time text message confirming a consumer’s request that no further text messages be sent does not violate the TCPA as long as the confirmation text merely confirms the called party’s opt-out request and does not include any marketing information.