> The companies named in the suits include Tollfreedeals.com, Global Voicecom Inc., Global Telecommunication Services Inc and KAT Telecom Inc.

I guess it's not clear to me exactly what role these companies play in the process. They aren't AT&T and Verizon. Tollfreedeals.com sounds like it would be one of the scammers, not one of the phone companies, but I can't tell from the article.

These companies get paid by the scam call centers overseas, so they are the gateway. They then route it through a series of middlemen until eventually going to AT&T or Verizon.

The complaints explain it well, specifically on page 9 (items 21-23) of https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1240031/downl...

Presumably they have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interconnect_agreement arrangements with the big telecoms. And by law, the big telecoms have no choice but to accept that and carry their calls.

If they choose to source calls from scammers, and lie about the phone number, by the agreement the big telecoms have to pretend to believe them.

The solution is either to change the law, or to penalize scammer enablers. The government is choosing the latter approach.

I wish them luck, but I am cynical about how this will turn out.

I am glad they're not jumping straight to the first approach - that seems much shadier to me and a way for the Telcos to start forcing more fees on external carriers. Giving them the power to cut off call carrying unless the partner agrees to audits and other expenditures (like customer list sharing) for "security reasons". There are legitimate issues here, but the first option seems like throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

They're VoIP service providers—they sell PBX access and US numbers to the scammers. Without a VoIP provider in the US to route through, the scammers would have to be calling from India using their own +91-country-code numbers, which could be pretty easily ignored. (Most people don't have any genuine reason to expect a call from India, and could just set up rule-based blocking for the whole country. It would probably become a feature you could enable on any residential phone provider's account page.)

Any idea why only temporary?

Presumably it's a temporary injunction until the cases can actually be tried