There's are reasons AT&T are on my permablacklist, and this article (along with a slew of others at the Dallas Morning News) is several of them. AT&T, and other major telcos, are fatally conflicted over telephone solicitations, in all their forms: unsolicited phone calls, robocalls, spam, and scams. They've dragged their feet for decades whilst their subscribers lose billions of dollars to at best useless and unecessary goods and services, and at worst, fraud and scams.

Dave Lieber of DMN ran a series of articles on this as well, I recommend:

"Watchdog Memo to AT&T's CEO: Didn't mean to get you in trouble" <https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2016/07/08/watchdog...>

And:

"Watchdog: AT&T's CEO gets new job, Frontier employees dance during disaster" <https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2016/08/04/watchdog...>

At Techdirt: "AT&T Falsely Blames The FCC For Company's Failure To Block Annoying Robocalls " <https://www.techdirt.com/2016/06/02/att-falsely-blames-fcc-c...>

The FCC announcement, voted on June 18, 2015: "Fact Sheet: Wheeler Proposal to Protect and Empower Consumers Against Unwanted Robocalls, Texts to Wireless Phones" <https://web.archive.org/web/20150910081851/https://apps.fcc....> (PDF)