Watching you…

It has happened again.

Another carrier bites the dust, starved to death by the FCC in an order that requires all the OTHER nation’s wireless carriers to stop accepting traffic.

We’ve seen this sort of thing before. Twice actually. First Global UC was killed for failing to respond to an email.  Then it killed Urth Access for carrying lead generation traffic, in an order so bad for industry I didn’t even blog about it.

Well now we have a third order, and it is even weirder than the others.

As before the order operates like this- FCC doesn’t like the traffic a carrier is running. So it orders all the other carriers in the nation to stop doing business with it.

I mean… that’s weird already.

Specifically here, the FCC just “require[d] any voice service provider immediately downstream from One Eye to block and cease accepting traffic from One Eye no later than 30 days after release of this Final Determination Order.”

So year, all carries have until June 10, 2023 to stop doing business with One Eye– or else!

While I hate the idea of government’s dictating private affairs like this, as we tumble down this rabbit hole on this one the FCC’s action here seems pretty reasonable.

In the first place One Eye was carrying prerecorded “bank impersonation” calls– you know the calls made to confirm “you have preauthorized orders” placed “on your name” that never took place? Presumably these calls are designed to get folks on the phone to dupe them into providing their personal and bank information. Bad stuff.

But it gets even worse.

Apparently the FCC determined One Eye was created by the renowned Prince Anand–fabulous he– following the FCC’s enforcement efforts directed at Anand’s previous (scam?) company PZ/Illum Telecommunications for transmitting suspected illegal calls. So… yeah.

Despite the dubious pedigree of One Eye, the FCC went by “the book” and issued a couple of requests that One Eye investigate and remediate the potentially fraudulent traffic, which of course it did not.  So then the FCC issued an Initial Determination Order to One Eye–which it did not respond to.

That made it pretty simple for the Commission to shut One Eye for good. With no response to its IDO, the FCC could simply order One Eye’s traffic to end:

We issued an Initial Determination Order to One Eye after it failed to respond to the Notice. The Initial Determination Order required One Eye to file a response within 14 days of the date of issuance. One Eye failed to file a response. Because One Eye did not file any response, we find that it failed to provide an adequate response to the Initial Determination Order. Therefore, we issue this Final Determination Order as a result of One Eye’s failure to respond to the Initial Determination Order.

Simple as that.

A couple of takeaways here:

1. Don’t carry scam traffic;

2. If you do carry scam traffic–stop;

3. If you receive an IDO, respond to it (probably with the help of counsel);

4. Do not accept any traffic from One Eye;

5. Follow TCPAWorld.com closely for important information that will keep you in business.

For the curious– the FCC’s “stop carrying traffic” order authority comes from 47 CFR § 64.1200(n)– a CFR section of the FCC’s own creation. It has never been tested to my knowledge and I tend to doubt the FCC actually has the power it has granted itself here–but I doubt a lot of things.  I suspect the nation’s carriers won’t struggle too mightily against the One Eye order–the Commission seems to be on pretty solid ground here– but I’d keep one eye on whether this CFR is actually enforceable.

And we’ll keep an eye–perhaps more than one– on all of this for you.