In April of 2024, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) sent a Notice of Suspected Illegal Traffic to the voice service provider Veriwave Telco, LLC, claiming they were operating illegal robocall traffic. According to traceback requests from the Industry Traceback Group (ITG), Veriwave was placing calls to households advertising a fake tax relief program, scamming them in the process. In this Notice, the FCC ordered Veriwave to take steps to comply with FCC Rule 64.1200(n), which requires originating and gateway voice service providers to investigate any suspected illegal robocall traffic, blocking all that is revealed to be unlawful through these investigations. Additionally, they are expected to report these findings back to the Bureau within two weeks.
On July 9, the Enforcement Bureau of the FCC issued an Initial Determination Order against Veriwave, alleging that the voice service provider continued to fail to comply with Rule 64.1200(n). Veriwave had evidently ignored the Notice completely, and now has 14 days to respond to the new Order issued. If a response is not provided, and Veriwave does not demonstrate compliance within this response, by July 23, the Bureau will order all downstream carriers to block Veriwave’s traffic altogether.
Every voice service provider must strictly comply with robocall rules, and these recent events involving Veriwave help prove this. In the Robocall Mitigation Database, Veriwave confirmed that it was fully compliant with STIR/SHAKEN rules, and filed a robocall mitigation plan that it announced “dutifully complies” with all existing rules. However, if a voice service provider does not implement sufficient robocall mitigation actions, this level of compliance amounts to nearly nothing. Here, Veriwave did not cooperate with the ITG, providing incomplete responses to the traceback requests and failing to deny that it had originated the suspect robocalls. The lack of mitigation action in this regard caused the information to be sent to the FCC, who proceeded to commence the enforcement action. When under investigation for suspected illegal telecommunications activity, it is critical to be compliant in all regards, as meeting some standards but not others can result in heavy enforcement action being levied against a company anyway.
