The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is pushing to introduce a scorecard to evaluate telecom companies' performance in blocking illegal spam calls. The plan is to assess not only whether they complied with relevant rules but also how many illegal robocalls they actually stopped.

On Sept. 2 (local time), IT outlet Ars Technica reported that the FCC's Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau began a public comment process on evaluation criteria and how to present a 'Robocall Mitigation Scorecard'. It is reviewing formats including numeric scores, A to F letter grades and classifications such as low, medium and high risk. The final format has not been decided.

The main targets are wireless, wireline and internet voice (VoIP) providers with retail customers in the United States. A proposal has been put forward to exclude businesses dedicated solely to wholesale and transit. The FCC is seeking views on whether to include first those carriers that account for most of the retail market rather than evaluating every provider.

The metrics are broadly divided into actions and outcomes. Action metrics assess steps taken by carriers, such as providing spam-call blocking and labeling features, responding to requests to trace illegal callers and caller ID authentication. Outcome metrics look at the actual reduction in illegal calls, blocking rates and consumer complaints. The FCC is also considering adding a separate metric for false blocking, when legitimate calls are mistakenly blocked.

Possible data sources include consumer complaints to the FCC and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the robocall mitigation database, FCC enforcement actions, telecom industry tracing data on illegal callers and private call analytics companies. The FCC said that a single complaint does not necessarily mean a carrier failed to block a call, and it is also reviewing how to reflect data reliability and carrier size.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr (Brendan Carr) said tackling illegal robocalls is the FCC's top consumer protection task, and that a scorecard would help consumers choose carriers and spur competition among providers to improve. He said the process is not rulemaking to create new obligations, but a design stage for a system to disclose and compare existing response levels.