North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, along with Connecticut Attorney General William Tong and Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, led a bipartisan coalition of 51 attorneys general calling on the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) to require the telephone providers that route calls across the U.S. telephone network to implement more rigorous measures to prevent illegal and fraudulent robocalls from bombarding Americans.
“We need all phone companies, regardless of whether they originate, route, or deliver calls, to put in place measures that prevent spoofed calls and robocalls,” said Attorney General Josh Stein. “I’m pleased that the FCC is taking steps to create a uniform playing field for all phone providers. These changes will make it harder for bad actors to scam us through unlawful calls and easier for law enforcement to hold them accountable when they do.”
Illegal robocalls cost consumers, law enforcement, and the telecom industry approximately $13.5 billion every year. Often, these calls originate from overseas scam actors who spoof U.S.-based phone numbers, and the FCC recently required the phone companies that let these calls onto the U.S. telephone network to do more to keep them out. The FCC is now proposing expanding many of these rules to those few phone companies that, although largely invisible to the public, are exclusively responsible for routing these fraudulent and illegal calls across the U.S. phone network, regardless of where the calls originate.