FCC Chairman Brendan Carr (pictured in May on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.) said Monday that “robocalls are an all-too-common frustration — and threat — to American households.” File Photo by Ken Cedeno/UPI | License Photo
More than 1,000 “voice service providers” were effectively kicked off the U.S. phone network in America’s ongoing fight with the illegal robocall industry.
The Federal Communications Commission said Monday that its enforcement bureau removed more than 1,200 non-compliant robocall providers off its “Robocall Mitigation Database” for violating FCC rules on proper certifications.
“Robocalls are an all-too-common frustration — and threat — to American households,” stated FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.
Phone service providers are legally required to certify proper implementation of critical robocall-combatting tools in order to protect American consumers.
The FCC in April took steps to block robocalls from bypassing caller ID authentication tools in older non-Internet Protocol network technology.
The communications commission added its “final warning” arrived earlier this month in the form of an initial removal of 185 providers from the Robocall Mitigation Database.
“Failure to meet these obligations may result in removal from the database and blocking of the provider’s traffic,” the commission wrote.
FCC officials said the hundreds to more than a thousand providers failed to maintain accurate certifications for the FCC’s database and shirked responsibility on robocall mitigation as part of their role.
“Removed providers will only be permitted to refile in the database with express approval from the FCC’s Enforcement and Wireline Competition Bureaus,” federal officials wrote.
According to Carr, the FCC is doing “everything in its power” to fight back against malicious and illegal calls and “will continue to do so.”
“Providers that fail to do their duty when it comes to stopping these calls have no place in our networks,” he said Monday in a statement.
In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a 1991 law banning robocalls from cell phones and expanded restrictions to prohibit robocallers from collecting government-backed debts.
Monday’s official removal of the some 1,200 service providers stems from the FCC’s order in December to more than 2,400 providers to “cure their deficient filings” or provide reason why a database removal was not warranted.
Meanwhile, “Operation Robocall Roundup” was launched in its wake by a bipartisan group of 51 state and territorial attorneys general which issued warnings to 37 companies that demanded action on curtailing illegal robocalls from state networks.
It wasn’t until last year in February when the FCC ruled that robocalls using artificial intelligence were illegal.
The agency’s ruling came after the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office found a Texas-based organization used AI to impersonate then-U.S. President Joe Biden’s voice in calls that urged Democrats not to vote in the state’s Jan. 23. primary election.
