Active lobbying on upcoming FCC agenda items

There's been an uptick in activity by organizations advocating their views to the FCC on proposed rules to be discussed at the FCC's March 2026 Open Meeting. Let's have a look.

We briefly reviewed three of the agenda items that we thought were especially interesting in our recent blog post, Interesting agenda for FCC March open meeting. And yes, these are the items that have been the subject of recent meetings with Commission staff.

The proposed rules are:

• Call Center Onshoring — Require providers of telecommunications service, including VoIP providers and their affiliates, to limit the percentage of customer service calls they make from or answer at offshore call centers.
• Numbering Policies — Proposed rules would:
  • Restrict the resale of numbers to a single level to avoid masking accountability for parties making illegal robocalls.
  • Extend robocall certification requirements to all providers that receive numbering resources directly from the NANPA, including resellers.
• Modernizing Networks — Eliminate all filing requirements in the Commission's network change disclosure rules and update its rules for discontinuance.

Recent activity by advocates

Here’s a quick summary of recent activity on these proposed rules.

Call center onshoring

VON (Voice on the Net Coalition) questioned whether the Commission even has the necessary legal authority to adopt these rules. They cited a dissent by then-Commissioner Carr that questioned legal authority over such topics. VON encouraged the Commission to issue a Notice of Inquiry on this, which could be followed by a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.

ECAC (Enterprise Communications Advocacy Coalition) asked if the proposed rules would apply exclusively to voice calls or also extend to text messaging. They also asked several practical questions about how the rules would be applied. They were concerned that consumers may face longer wait times.

INCOMPAS also asked the Commission to launch a Notice of Inquiry before proceeding with rulemaking. They believe that this would develop the record with necessary details about the feasibility, costs, and consumer experience involved with offshoring versus onshoring call centers.

Answer Connect advocated their belief that the likely outcome of the onshoring rules would be to accelerate a massive shift toward AI-dominant customer service. They explained that the proposed rules leave a loophole that allows businesses to use AI to handle calls by default. They urged the Commission to prioritize policies that support human customer service jobs.

Numbering policies

INCOMPAS expressed their concern that the phrase “resellers of telephone numbers” used in the NPRM might be broader than what the Commission intended. They asked the Commission to make the definition clearer and more precise.

Modernizing networks

INCOMPAS encouraged the Commission to issue an NPRM that proposes specific shot clocks, safe harbors, and antidiscrimination rules.

March open meeting

The March 2026 Open Commission Meeting will be held on Thursday, March 26, 2026, at 10:30 am – 12:30 pm EDT.

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