Everyone has experienced a call claiming they won a free cruise, a vacation, or a call the tries to persuade Canadians to give up personal information. This has been an ongoing problem for many years, and to protect Canadians, the CRTC ordered telecom service providers to apply universal network-level call blocking by December 19, 2019, in accordance with the regulatory policy CRTC 2018-484.
What is Universal Network-Level Call Blocking?
Universal Network-Level Call Blocking (UNCB) will be implemented by TSPs (Telecommunication Service Providers) to block any calls in which the CLID (Calling Line Identifier) does not correspond to the North American Numbering Plan. Many of these types of numbers are spam, and the CRTC has come to the conclusion that blocking these calls will reduce the number of unsolicited or unwanted calls to Canadians.
The types of numbers that will be blocked are as follows:
- Caller ID that exceeds 15 digits
- CLID (Calling Line Identifier) does not correspond to the North American Numbering Plan
- Malformed numbers where the digits would not appear in dialling plans (e.g. 000-000-0000, 000-111-0000, 222-022-2222).
What’s the Deadline for TSPs?
TSPs have until December 19, 2019, to implement Universal Network-Level Call Blocking. The CRTC also mentioned that they are prepared to take further regulatory measures if TSPs don’t take the necessary steps to protect Canadians from unsolicited calls.
Leave a comment below or contact us if you have any questions about this regulation. We would be happy to answer!