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NAFCU's Carrie Hunt urged the Federal Communications Commission to develop a "common sense interpretation" of "residential" line under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, in a comment letter Monday, to ensure consumers receive information from their financial institutions on both their mobile and residential phone lines.

"While NAFCU and our members appreciate the FCC's effort to clarify and modernize its regulations with respect to the TCPA, we are deeply concerned that the FCC's continual distinction between mobile and residential lines in its regulations creates a discrepancy in consumer protection under the law," wrote Hunt, NAFCU's executive vice president of government affairs and general counsel.

She was responding to FCC's request for information on whether a telephone line in a home that is used for business purposes can be considered a "residential" line under the TCPA.

Hunt explained that under the TCPA, the FCC requires prior written consent for all automated calls unless the call does not include an advertisement or is not considered telemarketing. However, for a mobile phone line, a consumer's prior written consent is necessary regardless of the purpose of the call. Because more and more consumers do not have traditional home phone lines, Hunt wrote that this distinction is "problematic for many credit unions" and urged the FCC to remove it from the TCPA.

Concluding her letter, Hunt wrote, "As the use of mobile and online technologies have become the most pervasive mechanism of communication between financial institutions and their consumers, the FCC must ensure that its regulations do not have the unintended consequence of reducing consumers' access to vital information about their financial accounts."