H.R. 7124 — Introduced in House

I 118th CONGRESS 2d Session H. R. 7124 IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES January 29, 2024Mr. Soto introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce A BILL To amend the Communications Act of 1934 to direct the Federal Communications Commission to promulgate regulations that require providers of voice service to offer a robocall-blocking service at no additional charge to the customer, and for other purposes. 1. Short title This Act may be cited as the Roboblock Act. 2. Offering of robocall-blocking service at no charge to customer Section 227 of the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 227) is amended by adding at the end the following: (k) Offering of robocall-Blocking service at no charge to customer (1) Regulations Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this subsection, the Commission shall promulgate regulations that require a provider of voice service to offer a robocall-blocking service to each customer of the provider, at no additional charge to the customer. (2) Definitions In this subsection: (A) Robocall (i) In general The term robocall means a call made or text message sent— (I) using equipment, whether hardware, software, or a combination thereof and including an automatic telephone dialing system, that makes a call or sends a text message to— (aa) stored telephone numbers; or (bb) telephone numbers produced using a random or sequential number generator; or (II) using an artificial or prerecorded voice or an artificially generated message. (ii) Limitation For purposes of clause (i)(I), the term robocall does not include a call made or text message sent using equipment that requires substantial human intervention to make or send the call or text message. (B) Robocall-blocking service The term robocall-blocking service means a service that gives a customer of a provider of voice service the ability to block robocalls that are highly likely to be illegal. (C) Text message (i) In general The term text message means a message consisting of text, images, sounds, or other information that is transmitted to or from a device that is identified as the receiving or transmitting device by means of a 10-digit telephone number, N11 service code, short code telephone number, or email address, or that is transmitted through application-to-person messaging, and includes— (I) a short message service (commonly referred to as SMS) message; (II) a multimedia message service (commonly referred to as MMS) message; and (III) a rich communication service (commonly referred to as RCS) message. (ii) Limitation The term text message does not include a real-time, two-way voice or video communication. (D) Voice service The term voice service has the meaning given such term in section 4(a) of the Pallone-Thune TRACED Act (47 U.S.C. 227b(a)). .