Responding to the complaint of 48 Attorneys General, the FCC has issued a cease-and-desist again Avid Telecom, that’s irritating people with billions of robocalls.
Though Avid Telecom claims that it’s making calls based on indirect consent it received from its call receivers, the attorney’s general slam that they were not clearly informed of this. Thus, FCC sided with them to thump Avid Telecom and asked it to stop making such robocalls further.
Accused of Making Billions of Robocalls
Robocalls are one of the most annoying things phone users often face, from marketing companies informing them about their offerings. Blocking the numbers, marking them as spam or using special apps to reject them automatically won’t work, as the robocall firms come with new bypassing techniques all the time.
Well, an injunction order from the regulator may work at this time, as the attorneys general of 48 states in the US has pursued a complaint against a robocall network, Avid Telecom. The attorneys general has sued the Arizona-based Avid Telecom for serving over 7.5 billion calls to people on the National Do Not Call Registry.
The robocalls originating from Avid Telecom’s network were spoofed to be coming from government offices, law enforcement agencies and companies like Amazon, and been informing people about various services. The attorneys general has been accused of receiving multiple insurance-related robocalls from Avid Telecom’s network.
Based on their complaint, FCC investigated the suit to find that Avid Telecom is “apparently originating illegal robocall traffic on behalf of one or more of its clients.” Working with the US Telecom’s Industry Traceback Group, FCC determined that these robocalls are made without the user’s consent!
Though Avid fought back, saying that its customers obtained consent from their users through opt-in websites, FCC wasn’t convinced and said the group “failed to make adequate disclosures to obtain consent.” In some cases, people claim to have received calls even after they revoked the consent.
Thus, the FCC has now issued a cease-and-desist order to Avid Telecom – preventing it from making such Illegal calls to new and existing customers. Also, the company was ordered to start investigating the identified spam traffic and implement measures to prevent them. Failing to do so within two days will force FCC to make all the downstream voice service providers permanently block all of Avid’s traffic.
