FCC

Regulatory efforts to protect consumers from harassment and robocalling are forcing big changes. Attorney Quyen Truong at Stroock & Stroock explains.

Banking and mortgage groups are asking the Federal Communications Commission to issue new Telephone Consumer Protection Act rules that would make consumer lawsuits over robocalls harder to win.

Banks say that an appeals court’s decision to ease restrictions will allow them to warn customers more easily when loans are past due or accounts have been compromised. But consumer groups argue that the decision gives financial firms license to market their products more aggressively and could lead to more harassing phone calls over unpaid debts.

You would think that air should be free, but of course air, or at least the right to send signals through it, has not been free for some time. The FCC controls the right to use air to transmit information, divvying the air up into all sorts of frequencies and selling them off to the highest bidder. From a bankruptcy perspective, the right to use the air is well understood as an asset, and can be transferred or even sold under the right conditions.