332 comments and counting on the FCC's OSP know-your-customer proposal

TransNexus takes an early read on the comment flood landing on the FCC’s Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on originating-provider KYC. The rules would require OSPs to collect a name, physical address, government-issued ID number, and an alternate phone number from new and renewing customers — and, for business, high-volume, and foreign callers, the intended use of the service plus the IP address each call originates from. With comments due June 25, roughly 332 had already hit ECFS by press time, “most appear to be from individual citizens,” and the recurring themes are privacy, breach exposure, and plain skepticism that any of it dents the robocall problem.

This is the consumer-facing half of the know-your-customer fight — the same docket the FCC’s anonymity proposal sits in — now measured by who’s bothering to comment, and it’s ordinary subscribers, not the industry. Worth noting whose telescope we’re looking through: TransNexus sells branded calling and STIR/SHAKEN tooling, and its framing leads where you’d expect — that strong KYC is the precondition for a legitimate full A-level attestation, and that without it you can’t really know the customer you’re vouching for.

The more durable point is buried in their own data. Their monthly statistics keep surfacing a small set of prolific robocall signers who serve bad traffic regardless of the rules. Stronger KYC won’t stop those actors from signing; it gives enforcement a cleaner identity to act against after the fact. That’s the honest case for the rule — KYC as an enforcement instrument, not a prevention one — and it’s a useful data point to carry into the synthesis as the comment count climbs. Watch the Regulatory Watch dispatches as the docket fills out.