Customer proprietary network information
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Customer proprietary network information (CPNI) is the data collected by telecommunications companies about a consumer's telephone calls. It includes the time, date, duration and destination number of each call, the type of network a consumer subscribes to, and any other information that appears on the consumer's telephone bill.
Telemarketers working on behalf of telephone companies, attempting to either win back a customer or upsell a customer with more services must ask the customer's consent before accessing the billing information, before using that information to offer an upsell or any change of services. Usually, this is done right at the beginning of the call from the telemarketer to the telephone subscriber.
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The U.S. Telecommunications Act of 1996 granted the FCC authority to regulate how Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI) can be used and to enforce related consumer information privacy provisions. The recently adopted rules in the FCC CPNI Order further restrict CPNI use and create new notification and reporting requirements:
- limits the information that carriers may provide to third party marketing firms without first securing the affirmative consent of their customers
- defines when and how customer service representatives may share call details
- creates new notification and reporting obligations for carriers (including identity verification procedures)
The FCC’s recent CPNI Order does not revise all CPNI rules. For example, the rule revisions adopted in the Order do not limit a carrier's ability to use CPNI to perform billing and collections functions, restrict CPNI use to effect maintenance and repair activity, or impact responses to lawful subpoenas.
Fines for failure to comply with CPNI rules can be substantial. Since 2006, the FCC, focusing on one rule regarding internal annual compliance certificates, proposed over $1M in fines and those fines are not necessarily indicative of the fines the FCC could propose. The FCC is authorized to impose fines of up to $130,000 for each rule violation or each day of a continuing violation up to a maximum of $1.3M for each continuing violation. The rules adopted in the Order are effective six months after the Order is published in the Federal Register or on receipt of OMB approval of the new rules whichever is later. (Order at ¶61)
