On August 1, 2023, the Enforcement Bureau released a Public Notice notifying all U.S.-based voice service providers that, pursuant to Section 64.1200(k)(4), if One Owl fails to mitigate the identified traffic described in the cease-and-desist letter noted below, they may block voice calls or cease to accept traffic from One Owl Telecom Inc. (“One Owl”) without liability under the Communications Act or the Commission’s rules.
One Owl has been identified by the Traceback Consortium as an originating or gateway provider responsible for substantial volumes of apparently unlawful robocalls, including calls related to fictitious purchase orders. Some of the calls purported to be from “AMC Trading LLC” and stated that products were ready to ship and asked the consumer to confirm the order. Others stated that a “pre-authorized order” was placed in the consumer’s name. From February 3, 2023 to May 31, 2023, One Owl appeared in over 40 tracebacks as an originating or gateway provider for suspected illegal robocalls pertaining to fictitious orders. One Owl is related to One Eye LLC (“One Eye”) and Illum Telecommunication Limited (“Illum”) both of whom have faced enforcement action from the FCC for transmitting illegal traffic.
Contemporaneous with the Notice, the Bureau issued a cease-and-desist letter to One Owl that sets forth investigation and mitigation requirements. One Owl 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 Owl’s removal from the Robocall Mitigation Database, obligating all other providers to cease carrying all of its traffic.
In the event that One Owl 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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