Bell Canada – Application to allow Bell Canada block certain voice calls approved

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) yesterday issued a decision approving on a permanent basis the application of Bell Canada to block certain fraudulent and scam voice calls (including those transiting Bell’s network).

The CRTC found that during the trial, Bell blocked more than 1.2 billion calls without a false positive.  Conditions on the approval include Bell filing annual reports on the number of calls blocked;  a requirement that Bell notify the CRTC of changes made to the AI system used to detect fraudulent calls; Bell must notify other service providers of the phone number and email address to contact to report false positives; a process for dealing with complaints of false positives; and Bell cannot use or disclose personal or confidential information used to detect fraudulent calls other than implementing the call blocking system.

Details can be found at https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2021/2021-403.htm  or PDF version