Attorney General Brenna Bird Pushes Federal Government to Strengthen ‘Know Your Upstream Provider Rules’ to Combat Illegal Robocalls
DES MOINES— Attorney General Brenna Bird and a bipartisan coalition of 48 other attorneys general are urging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to strengthen its “Know Your Upstream Provider” (KYUP) requirements to prevent scammers from using the U.S. phone network to make illegal robocalls. KYUP rules require voice service providers to ensure that they receive calls from legitimate and responsible providers only.
Phone calls get routed through a series of phone companies before they reach your phone. The FCC requires all voice service providers to take reasonable measures to vet the phone companies that originate and route calls. However, some voice service providers fail to do so, allowing illegal robocalls onto the U.S. communications network. Last year, Americans received more than 29.6 billion scam robocalls and texts and lost nearly $2 billion to these scams.
"Iowans deal with illegal robocalls and texts every day, and it needs to stop,” said Attorney General Bird. “The calls often lead to scams that cost generous Iowans thousands of dollars, sometimes even their life savings. I joined this bipartisan effort to urge the FCC to strengthen the Know Your Upstream Provider rules, so the scams calls don’t come through and Iowans are protected.”
The attorneys general are asking the FCC to strengthen voice service providers’ obligation to vet their upstream provider customers, and to require the same scrutiny and diligence of the entities involved in the implementation of the framework developed to prevent caller ID spoofing.
Attorney General Bird is part of the Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force, which launched Operation Robocall Roundup in 2025.
In phase 1 of the operation, the task force sent warning letters to 37 smaller voice providers that were disregarding their obligations to mitigate the origination and transmission of illegal and/or suspicious robocalls by failing to comply with certain baseline mandates from the FCC. Just two weeks ago, the FCC issued an order to six of those companies, ordering them to fix their robocall protection issues or risk losing the ability to route any calls across the U.S. telephone network.
In phase 2, the task force:
Attorney General Bird is joined in signing this letter by the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
Read the letter here.
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For More Information:
Contact: Jen Green | jen.green@ag.iowa.gov
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