WASHINGTON – The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said on Thursday that voice service providers Bandwidth Inc and Vonage Holding lost a partial exemption from standards aimed at stopping robocalls and were referred for further investigation.
“We will not turn a blind eye to providers that have not done enough to protect consumers from spoofed robocalls,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, saying the FCC had referred the companies to the commission’s Enforcement Bureau.
The FCC is overseeing compliance with provider phone companies to implement standards designed to help prevent unwanted phone calls, required by June 2021.
The standards, known as “STIR/SHAKEN”, provide a common information sharing language between networks to verify caller ID information and help prevent robocalls.
Under a Congressional directive, providers meeting early implementation goals 2020 were granted some conditional leniency.
The FCC said Vonage is not verifying caller ID information for all authenticated calls it receives, as required by FCC rules.
Vonage did not immediately comment.
Bandwidth said it was an early adopter of the standards “to prevent robocalling” but acknowledged it still operates “some legacy equipment that supports a small amount of traffic that cannot support the STIR/SHAKEN standards at this time.”
Bandwidth added it is “working diligently to move this traffic off of this legacy equipment so we can be fully compliant with STIR/SHAKEN standards.”
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chris Reese and Kenneth Maxwell)
