Utilities' Petition for TCPA Exemption Too Broad, NARUC Says
The American Gas Association and Edison Electric Institute’s Feb. 12 petition for expedited declaratory relief from the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) is “overly broad,” said NARUC in comments posted Monday in docket 02-278. AGA and EEI’s petition asks the…
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agency to confirm that when a customer provides a telephone number to an energy utility, it constitutes “’prior express consent’” to receive autodialed or recorded nontelemarketing informational calls. NARUC agreed utilities should be allowed to send notifications about outages and restoration of service, and with “summer storms on the horizon,” the agency should immediately declare that those calls are exempted from TCPA as calls made for emergency purposes. But an exemption should be limited to those calls, the filing said. Wireless customers "should not have to pay for other communications from utilities that they may not wish to receive," according to NARUC.