South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson has announced Phase 2 of Operation Robocall Roundup earlier this week, significantly expanding the crackdown on illegal robocalls to include four of the largest voice providers in the United States.
As part of an ongoing investigation led by the bipartisan Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force, four major voice providers—Inteliquent, Bandwidth, Lumen, and Peerless—have been directed to immediately stop transmitting suspected illegal robocalls across their networks.
Targeting High-Volume Carriers
This new phase targets companies with far larger footprints in the U.S. telecom eco system compared to the 37 smaller providers that received initial warning letters in August. Despite extensive industry alerts and years of documented warnings, these four large providers continue to route vast amounts of illegal traffic.
The data gathered reveals the staggering scale of suspected illegal robocall activity linked to these companies:
| Provider | Total Traceback Notices (since 2019) | Estimated Amazon/Apple Imposter Robocalls (3-year period) | Estimated SSA/IRS Imposter Robocalls (3–4-year period) |
| Inteliquent | 9,712 | 450 million | 1.425 billion |
| Lumen | 7,265 | 261.5 million | 886.2 million |
| Peerless | 5,662 | 210.7 million | 585.3 million |
| Bandwidth | 3,060 | 162.7 million | 301 million |
A traceback notice is an official alert from industry investigators indicating a company transmitted a call tied to a suspected illegal robocall campaign, often involving scams like fake Amazon, Apple, Social Security Administration (SSA), or Internal Revenue Service (IRS) calls.
As larger providers, these companies are deemed to have a heightened responsibility to decline call traffic from known bad actors.
Phase 1 Delivers Results
The action builds on the success of Phase 1, which involved sending warning letters to 37 smaller companies. That initial effort yielded rapid and measurable results:
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19 companies stopped appearing in any traceback results, indicating they ceased routing suspected illegal robocalls.
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13 companies were removed from the FCC’s Robocall Mitigation Database, effectively blocking their call traffic from being accepted by any U.S. provider.
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At least four providers terminated high-risk customer accounts identified as transmitting illegal traffic.
The Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force was formed in 2022 by 51 attorneys general to investigate and take legal action against companies responsible for significant volumes of illegal and fraudulent robocall traffic. The current expansion aims to further reduce the volume of these scam calls reaching consumers.
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