How do I register legitimate outbound calling use cases?

Follow

Sarah

Updated

In an effort to protect end users against unwanted calls, carriers, and consumer application providers have been increasingly blocking or labeling calls that they feel fit typical robocalling campaign characteristics, such as high call volumes and short or unanswered calls. When their own analytics indicate potentially unwanted traffic, carriers may respond by blocking calls or inserting “Spam Likely”, “Telemarketer”, “Fraud Likely”, or other similar labels to display on the handset.

This kind of call analysis is difficult because while fraudulent robocalls often do show some of these characteristics, so can many legitimate use cases, including school closing notifications, weather alerts, and patient reminders, that recipients want and have opted-in to receive. Still, when viewed en-masse at the network level, they can look like illegal robocalling.

To ensure that your outbound calls aren't miscategorized as unwanted by downstream carriers or applications, we highly encourage you to proactively register legitimate outbound calling use cases using the Free Caller Registry portal. Mobile carriers T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon together with their respective partnered Analytics Engines First Orion, Hiya, and Transaction Network Services (TNS) have set up this portal to allow callers to more easily register their traffic with all of their systems at the same time. This registration portal may not cover other consumer applications responsible for call labeling or blocking. Additional guidance from the FCC can be found in the Tips to Avoid Having Legitimate Calls Blocked.

Once you register and submit the required information via the portal, the Analytics Engines will vet it and follow up with you directly. If your request is approved, it may take a few days for changes to your phone number(s) to go into effect. The registration process doesn’t guarantee that your calls won’t be blocked or labeled in the future, however, registration is intended to greatly reduce the risk of blocking or labeling.

Bandwidth is exploring additional solutions to help our customers navigate call blocking or labeling issues. We also continue to be an active leader in industry groups to advocate for the streamlining of processes to support the delivery of our customers’ traffic. At this time, however, Bandwidth is unable to provide status updates, escalate, or expedite your submissions to the Free Caller Registry. If you have questions for any of the Analytics Engines, please contact them directly:

Article is closed for comments.