Jackson leads bipartisan call for stronger federal robocall rules
A coalition of 49 attorneys general is asking the Federal Communications Commission to impose stronger verification, monitoring and record-retention requirements on telephone service providers.
RALEIGH — North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson is leading a bipartisan coalition of 49 attorneys general asking federal regulators to strengthen requirements intended to prevent telephone companies from carrying illegal robocalls.
The coalition is urging the Federal Communications Commission to expand its “Know Your Upstream Provider” requirements. Those rules govern how voice service providers evaluate companies that send calls into their networks.
Calls may pass through several companies before reaching a consumer. The FCC requires voice providers to take reasonable measures to determine whether the companies originating or routing those calls are legitimate and responsible.
The attorneys general argue that the current requirements do not provide enough protection against companies that repeatedly transmit illegal or suspicious calls.
Their recommendations include five categories of baseline verification measures. Providers would be required to collect and verify more information from upstream companies, monitor those companies regularly and refuse or terminate service when a provider fails to follow federal requirements.
The coalition also wants the FCC to establish additional events that would trigger a review. Under the current system, monitoring generally occurs when companies enter or renew agreements or when evidence emerges that an upstream provider may be violating the law.
The attorneys general are also seeking stronger and more consistent enforcement of STIR/SHAKEN, a caller-identification framework designed to combat the unlawful spoofing of telephone numbers.
Additional recommendations include establishing penalties for providers that fail to monitor upstream companies and requiring companies to retain verification and monitoring records. The coalition said those records should remain available to federal and state law-enforcement agencies conducting future investigations.
According to the North Carolina Department of Justice, Americans received more than 29.6 billion scam robocalls and text messages last year and reported nearly $2 billion in losses.
Jackson leads the Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force. Its earlier work included warning 37 smaller voice providers accused of failing to meet federal obligations intended to reduce illegal calls. The FCC subsequently ordered six companies to correct deficiencies or risk losing access to the nation’s telephone network, according to the department.
The coalition includes attorneys general from states led by both political parties, as well as the District of Columbia and American Samoa.
The FCC will decide whether to incorporate the coalition’s recommendations into its regulatory requirements.
Editor’s note:
This article was drafted with the assistance of artificial intelligence and was reviewed and fact-checked by a member of the NC Political News editorial team before publication.
