FCC plays whack-a-mole with telcos accused of profiting from robocalls
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Thamrongpat Theerathammakorn)
A suspicious phone company is on the verge of having all its calls blocked by US-based telcos after being accused of ignoring orders to investigate and block robocalls.
One Owl Telecom is a US-based gateway provider that routes phone calls from outside the US to consumer phone companies such as Verizon. "Robocalls on One Owl's network apparently bombarded consumers without their consent with prerecorded messages about fictitious orders," the Federal Communications Commission said yesterday.
On August 1, the FCC sent One Owl a Notification of Suspected Illegal Robocall Traffic ordering it to investigate robocall traffic identified by USTelecom's Industry Traceback Group, block all of the identified traffic within 14 days, and "continue to block the identified gateway traffic as well as substantially similar traffic on an ongoing basis."