Troy, appreciate the post, and I 100% understand your frustrations. I work at Commio and wanted to respond. Apologies in advance for the long explanation, but I think it will shed some light on the current state of cloud voice.
Fraud, abuse, and unwanted calls are unacceptable, and, like the many companies standing between companies placing calls and consumers receiving them, we take all such reports very seriously. We offer a Report a Number link on our website so any unwanted call placed using a number we sold can be investigated, traced, and action taken to shut down the traffic.
Commio (thinQ/teli) was a member of the Federal Communications Commission’s task force to combat fraud and robocalling and we are an active member of the working groups resulting from that task force. In addition, we have implemented STIR/SHAKEN protocols to help stop fraudulent calling from spoofed numbers, and are also set to launch one of the first branded calling solutions to enable brands to fully sign and vet their calls, preventing spoofing once and for all. 2025 is going to be one for the record books.
Who is Commio: Commio does not make any calls to consumers and generally only provides a network interconnection “bridge” between a calling party’s telecom provider and a called party’s telecom provider. We provide voice interconnection services to other telecom carriers, enterprises, and cloud platforms. We provide service to virtually every major national carrier in the United States. We also provide interconnection services to VoIP providers. We essentially carry phone calls between all of these telecom companies. As part of our service, we also provide telephone numbers to VoIP providers, who then assign these numbers to their end-user subscribers. We provide phone numbers to these VoIP providers because regulatory restrictions limit their ability to obtain their own phone numbers.
How We Can Help: Commio does not provide service to individuals and, by law, is prohibited from knowing the identities of our customers’ end users. Because of this, we must forward most abuse reports we receive to the service provider to whom we have assigned the number in question. We will promptly send your report to the appropriate service provider and request they promptly commence an investigation.
Please also note that our services are not exclusive, and just because a number comes back to Commio (thinQ/teli), it does not mean we carry all traffic for the originating provider. Our service-provider customers have the option to use other carriers to transport some or all of their calls. When our service-provider customer sends voice traffic to another carrier, the call does not touch our network.
In some cases, we can provide you with contact information for our service-provider customer. If that option is available, Commio will send you an email with the service-provider’s contact information so that you can work directly with them to resolve your complaint.
Sometimes, our customers will investigate a report and determine that the calling number has been “spoofed.” Caller ID spoofing occurs when the caller inserts a falsified number into the call stream so that your Caller ID shows a phone number that did not make the call. When this occurs, neither we nor our customer will actually know what number or person made the call. Please understand disconnecting a spoofed number will not stop the calls you are receiving because that number did not make the call – it is simply fake Caller ID information sent to your phone.
If you need additional information about spoofing or stopping unwanted calls, the Federal Trade Commission (www.ftc.gov) and Federal Communications Commission (www.fcc.gov) have both posted information and tips on their websites to help consumers including information about call blockers, the national Do Not Call Registry (www.donotcall.gov) and how to report numbers associated with scam calls.
I would also strongly urge you to contact your local law enforcement agency for assistance if you receive fraudulent, abusive or threatening communications and you are concerned about your safety.
Troy, thanks for listening, and feel free to reach out to me anytime: tim (at) commio.com.