As the Czar reported on Friday, July 26, a coalition of various industry parties strongly supported adding a variety of call categories to the Critical Calls List.

Others have chimed in supporting these categories and other call classes, including low balance notifications, school messaging, local government calls, weather alerts, alarm companies, first responders, military communications and airline alerts. For example, Twilio included a number of these in urging the List include “calls intended to provide important information to the public that relates to the safety of life or property.” A number of these further suggestions were among those specifically identified in the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Friday, June 7, Third Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (TFNPRM).

Other commenters addressing the subject, some of whom were also part of the industry group, included the American Association of Healthcare Administrative Management, Consumer Bankers Association, INCOMPAS, Sprint, West Telecom Services and Transaction Network Services. The CTIA, trade association of the wireless carriers, among others, generally supported the FCC’s objective to “protect critical calls.”

There were some cautionary comments. ACA International warned against carriers being permitted to unilaterally decide that a call should be blocked due in part to the fact that the number is not on the Critical Calls List.

On the other hand, the Professional Association for Customer Engagement urged that inclusion on the List should not serve as the only factor in deciding whether default blocking should be applied.

Access to these, all the comments filed to date on this subject, and other issues raised by the TFNPRM can be accessed here. As the Czar noted, reply comments are due by Friday, August 23.