On average, how many spam phone calls would you say you typically receive?
Once or twice a day?
A few times each week?
Well right now, rather than how many of us view robocalls– as bothersome occurrences with dozens of operations at root cause – it turns out a single company may be at fault for a bulk of them.
At the center of this is VoIP provider Avid Telecom. The company offers many services, including DIDs, outbound minutes, SMS and so on. As we speak, however, Avid is being sued by the attorneys general of (and this is staggering) 48 total U.S. states for allegedly facilitating billions of robocalls.
To me, readers, that demonstrates the messiness here. When most attorneys general of the U.S. – a country of severely differing political views and ideologies – are all on your doorstep, something is likely severely amiss.
As is the case for Avid Telecom.
Specifics from the complaint detail how Avid reportedly sold phone numbers, data and dialing software, allowing for the mass automation of calls and even area code spoofing in order to get people on the other line to pick up. Information from The National Law Review says that “between Dec. 31, 2018, and Jan. 31, 2023, Avid made and/or attempted to make more than 24.5 billion calls. Among the approximately 21 billion calls made to valid U.S. phone numbers, about 93% of those calls had a call duration of less than 15 seconds.”
This is huge.
What’s more is that (again, per the complaint) Avid transmitted 7.5 billion robocalls to people on the official Do Not Call Registry, which is illegal.
“Every day, millions of American consumers receive a barrage of unwanted robocalls that are harassing, annoying, and even threatening and malicious,” one of the filing attorneys general wrote. “These calls are all scams designed to scare and harm those consumers. Even if other calls aren’t strictly scams, they are still abusive and illegal, nonetheless.”
And the thing is, Avid had to have seen this coming. Per The Washington Post, “an industry group designated by the FCC (News - Alert) to report spam calls issued at least 329 total notifications to Avid, but its company executives seemed to have ignored those warnings.”
Yet, Avid claims that any misrepresentation of its services, its affiliations with other entities, or any false or misleading statements are simply that.
In a statement from Avid Telecom itself, the company said “Contrary to the allegations in the complaint, Avid Telecom operates in a manner that is compliant with applicable state and federal laws and regulations. The company has never been found by any court or regulatory authority to have transmitted unlawful traffic and it is prepared to meet with the Attorneys General to further demonstrate its good faith and lawful conduct.”
This statement was alleged in contrast to the 141-page lawsuit filed against the VoIP provider by the nationwide Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force.
Edited by
Greg Tavarez
