FTC Agenda Revealed
Federal Communications Commission Chairman William Kennard last week unveiled an ambitious agenda for the agency over the next 12 months that includes protecting the personal privacy of consumers and crackdowns on fraud by telephone and the Internet as well as overhauling the FCC.
While he didn’t go into detail about those and other goals, Kennard said the agency would seek to improve personal privacy protections both domestically and with internationally.
Stating that the FCC “will protect [telephonic] customers from unscrupulous competitors,” Kennard said this year the agency would show “zero tolerance for perpetrators of consumer fraud such as slamming and cramming.”
Slamming is the unauthorized switching of a customer’s telephonic service by from one company to another while cramming is the loading of customer telephone bills with unauthorized services.
Kennard also revealed that this year the FCC plans to let Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOC’s) “into the long-distance market when they have opened their own local markets to competition” but did not say when that would happen.
