On February 15, 2023, the Enforcement Bureau released a Public Notice notifying all U.S.-based voice service providers that, pursuant to Section 64.1200(k)(4), they may block voice calls or cease to accept traffic from One Eye LLC (“One Eye”) without liability under the Communications Act or the Commission’s rules.
One Eye has been identified by the Traceback Consortium as the originator of substantial volumes of apparently unlawful robocall traffic. The Bureau notes that One Eye appears to have been created by PZ Illum Telecommunications, which has been the subject of previous FCC robocall enforcement actions, in an attempt to evade those enforcement efforts.
Contemporaneous with the Notice, the Bureau issued a cease-and-desist letter to One Eye that sets forth investigation and mitigation requirements. One Eye is required to: (1) immediately investigate and mitigate the traffic identified in the letter; (2) notify the FCC/Traceback Consortium within 48 hours of the steps taken to mitigate the identified traffic, and (3) inform the FCC/Traceback Consortium, within 14 days, of the steps taken to prevent customers from using the service provider’s network to transmit illegal robocalls. Failure to comply with these requirements may result in One Eye’s removal from the Robocall Mitigation Database, obligating all other providers to cease carrying all of its traffic.
In the event that One Eye fails to comply with the requirements laid out in the cease-and-desist letter, the Bureau will issue a follow-up Order to all U.S.-based voice service providers notifying them of this fact. In the event that a follow-up Order is issued by the Bureau in this matter, pursuant to section 64.1200(n)(2) of the Commission’s Rules, all U.S.-based voice service providers shall be required to “[t]ake steps to effectively mitigate illegal traffic,” including investigating and taking steps—up to and including blocking, if necessary—to prevent the source of the illegal traffic from continuing to originate such traffic.
The FCC also released a Press Release on the steps it is taking to address this issue.
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