Spanish telecom industry association DigitalES analyses the pros and cons of the newly enacted Customer‑Service Act for tackling commercial nuisance calls, illustrating practical difficulties in implementing Spain’s regulatory rules for outbound A2P voice calls.
Enacted by the Spanish Parliament, the Customer‑Service Act aims to strengthen consumer rights protection. It establishes a dedicated caller‑identification coding system and mandates telecom operators to carry out technical blocking for non‑compliant commercial and customer‑service inbound calls. However, DigitalES points out inherent flaws within this technical blocking mechanism: it can only verify technical attributes and cannot confirm whether a call has obtained valid consent from consumers. Regulators need to roll out clear technical implementing provisions and institutional support; otherwise, blocking effectiveness will be significantly diminished.
The Act also includes exemption clauses: electricity, gas and telecom enterprises with a market share below 5 % are exempted from caller‑identification obligations. This creates loopholes for certain commercial nuisance calls and makes the complete elimination of unwanted outbound calls unachievable. Meanwhile, the Act stipulates that “95 % of incoming calls shall be answered within three minutes”. According to the association’s assessment, this requirement imposes excessive resource costs on enterprises including public institutions and digital platforms and constitutes a disproportionate burden.
On the other hand, telecom operators have presented solid anti‑fraud performance. In the first nine months after the corresponding anti‑fraud ministerial order took effect, operators jointly blocked 135 million fraudulent calls and more than 5 million fraudulent SMS messages. DigitalES states it is ready to cooperate with authorities to advance the implementation of the Act and improve legal certainty. Nevertheless, it clarifies that unwanted commercial nuisance calls cannot be fully eradicated as long as statutory exemption clauses remain in force. Companies providing outbound A2P voice services targeting Spain must not rely solely on operator‑side filtering. They shall implement end‑to‑end compliance covering consent verification and opt‑out management internally.
