Michael Schumann
{redacted]

January 23, 2002

Office of the Secretary
Federal Trade Commission
Room 159
600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20580

Re: Telemarketing Rulemaking - Comment. FTC File No. R411001

To the Commission:

As a consumer and Small Business Owner, I have, for many years, been extremely frustrated with the disruptiveness of the large quantity of unsolicited telemarketing calls that I receive at both my home and office locations.

While I totally agree with the objective that the FTC has in establishing a national DO NOT CALL list for consumers to opt out of telemarketing calls, I believe that this proposed rule will prove to be ineffective. In addition, the proposal to prohibit the blocking of Caller ID information will be completely counter-productive, by eliminating the only tool that consumers currently have to automatically filter out virtually 100% of unwanted telemarketing calls.

My experience with prohibition of unsolicited FAXs in the Telecommunications Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and the FCC's complete ineffectiveness in enforcing the statute and its own rules banning such practices, makes me extremely skeptical that a national DO NOT CALL list will work.

While legitimate telemarketing companies will presumably comply with the FTC's rules, the existence of FAX Broadcast vendors blatantly advertising their services on the internet, in open violation of federal law (www.express-advertising.com, www.amicron.com/fax, www.fax.com, etc…) and the large number of junk FAXs received daily by virtually everyone with a FAX machine, demonstrates that there are a large number of unscrupulous operators who will completely ignore the FTC's proposed DO NOT CALL database.

For years, my wife and I have endured the nightly assortment of telephone solicitations. However, after we started receiving junk FAXs on a regular basis at 4AM, I contacted Qwest (my local phone provider) and had them activate Anonymous Call Blocking on my telephone line. In the last 2 months, since I have activated this feature, I have not received a single junk FAX or telemarketing call.

Anonymous Call Blocking is available, as a standard feature, with Caller ID from almost all local phone companies. With this feature enabled, any caller who does not have identifiable Caller ID information receives a recording telling them that the called number does not accept unidentified calls, and permits the caller to enter their phone number to complete the call.

In my experience, which I think is typical for the average consumer, the ONLY unidentified calls that I receive are from telemarketers. The fact that virtually all telemarketers block their Caller ID information (either intentionally, or due to equipment limitations), provides a foolproof mechanism to automatically block these unwanted calls.

If proposed Rule 310.4(a)(6) is adopted, it would completely eliminate my ability to automatically screen out these calls. Instead, every telemarketing call would ring my phone and require me to check my caller ID device to see who is calling. This is just as disruptive as answering the phone.

I would like to offer an alternative solution to the FTC:

1. The FTC Rules should REQUIRE that all unsolicited telemarketing calls block their Caller ID information, thereby clearly identifying themselves as telemarketers.
2. All local phone companies should be required to offer Anonymous Call Blocking as a no charge feature, which each phone subscriber can turn on or off from their local telephone (using *77 for ON and *87 for OFF), regardless of whether or not the consumer subscribes to the Caller ID feature.
3. The FTC, in cooperation with the local telephone companies, should educate consumers on how they can use Anonymous Call Blocking to eliminate unsolicited telemarketing calls.

This approach has a number of major advantages:

1. It takes advantage of existing telephone system features that are currently deployed on almost all phone lines in the United States, without requiring the development or deployment of any new technology.
2. It does not require any centralized DO NOT CALL database saving the FTC and the industry a tremendous amount of money and other resources.
3. Because the blocking feature is controlled from the customer's own telephone there are no issues on whether or not the blocking is authorized by the consumer.
4. Call Blocking and Unblocking is handled automatically by the telephone company's central office switch, and does not require the intervention of any customer service agents, nor the deployment of any new telephone equipment.
5. Telemarketers do not have to make any changes to their existing procedures or equipment, and do not incur any additional costs to fully comply with the FTC rules.
6. Telemarketers who have an established business relationship with a customer can easily make calls to that customer, by selectively enabling the Caller ID information for that call, thereby bypassing any Call Blocking in effect. If this capability is abused, the customer has access to the telemarketer's Caller ID information, which can be supplied to law enforcement agencies for prosecution.
7. The technology is fully deployed and operational NOW. All that is required to make it effective is consumer education.

It would be VERY unfortunate, if the Commission inadvertently subverted this existing Call Blocking capability by the adoption of proposed Rule 310.4(a)(6).

Please feel free to contact me if I can be of any further assistance.

Sincerely,