mr. kevin michael altschul, mr. matthew stein. welcome and thank you for being here. , let softwarefoss developer from nomorobo. we will begin with your testimony, mr. rupy. >> think you for giving me the opportunity to appear before you today. i served as senior director of law and policy at the united states telecom association. our member companies shared the subcommittee also concerns about the problems associated with illegal robocalls. we understand the consumer frustration they cause and we have long worked and coordinating with relevant private and government stakeholders to address this issue. in addition to be harmed because consumers, robocalls impact u.s. telecom's own members. ofrepresent the first line defense on this issue and they must be well versed in explaining to customers the difference between legal and illegal robocalls, providing them with information on how to file a complaint, and pointing them to tools to help to mitigate these calls. robocalls can also adversely impact our company's networks. last calli

mr. altschul. if you have any response to the ftc of raising the issue of abolishing the commentary exemption. do you have any feel on that? >> in terms of the commentary exemption, senator, i think as senator mccaskill raised in her testimony this morning, we have these issues were have sort of conflicting regulations. one for wireline, one for wireless, and i think to the extent you start expanding the scope of, you know, numerous agencies regulating similar players in the field, that gets to be problematic. second, we fully support, and it sounds, what i thought heard in the earlier testimony is from the ftc that to the extent there's an entity out there engaging in illegal activity, they're going to go after the entity as well they should. we fully support that whether they are a common carrier or whomever. >> as the ftc's mr. bash testified, there's an existing working relationship between the two agencies in both enforcing the same laws and i think that there's some institutional advantages t