FCC Rejects Reconsideration of Calling Card Company Fines

The Federal Communications Commission rejected petitions for reconsideration of $20 million in fines issued against four prepaid calling card companies for deceptively marketing their products. In October 2015, the FCC issued separate $5 million fines against four calling card companies, Locus Telecommunications, Lyca Tel, NobelTel, and Touch-Tel USA, following an investigation by the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau. Each of the companies formally asked the FCC to reconsider those fines in four, separate petitions for reconsideration. The FCC dismisses and denies those requests and continues to seek payment of the fines.

The FCC has referred these matters to the US Department of Justice, which leads the process of collecting outstanding fines in federal court. The companies’ advertisements, apparently targeting immigrant communities, suggested that their calling cards could be used for hundreds or thousands of minutes of international calls. Multiple fees and surcharges added by the companies, however, caused the actual calling minutes available to consumers to be much fewer than advertised.