As Agcom points out, the filters implemented by operators on international calls with Italian numbers "prevented the delivery to Italian citizens of tens of millions of illicit calls, originating from abroad with Italian numbers, made for the purposes of teleselling and telemarketing". The system has thus contributed to limiting the phenomenon on the national territory, allowing the Authority to trace, also through the reports received, the operators and call centers responsible for "conducts that do not comply with the regulations".
In the same press release, the Authority announced two sanctions for a total of 822,500 euros against Retelit Digital Services and Tekmind, equal to 700 thousand and 122,500 euros respectively. The measures were adopted as part of the supervisory activity on the correct use of telephone numbers entrusted to call centers, started in November 2025 following numerous reports. The complaints concern "the failure to implement the measures established by the Authority, consisting in verifying the correctness of the numbers used by the call centers, including the generation of numbers through the spoofing technique". The latter consists in the falsification of the caller ID, through which a phone call can appear to come from a number other than the actual one, even Italian, with the aim of making it more difficult to trace its origin.
Retelit contested the reconstruction relating to its business, specifying that it does not directly deal with telemarketing. "Retelit does not carry out or commission any telemarketing activity via call center for the sale of its services. As a telecommunications operator, the company's activity is limited only to the transfer for use to other authorized telephone operators of telephone numbers to make and receive calls using the Retelit telephone network", declared the group. The operator also defined the fine as an "unexpected measure, in its outcome and extent", adding that it reserves "the appropriate assessments". The sanction therefore concerns the failure to supervise the correct use of numbers, not the direct sale of services through commercial telephone calls.
The measures adopted by Agcom have not yet eliminated unwanted commercial calls and illicit conduct in the sector. This is what Codacons observes, according to which the 191 million blocked calls and the sanctions confirm the persistence of attempts to circumvent the rules. “A phenomenon that creates double damage, affecting both users, recipients of unwanted commercial calls, and the correct operators who operate legally and comply with the rules of the sector”, underlines the association. For Codacons, the provision represents an important intervention against those who harm consumers and the market. "In this sense, the Agcom sanction is important because it hits those who cause damage to the market and consumers, and it is essential to keep our guard up against those who operate illegally, firmly sanctioning the offences", concludes the organization.
The Alliance to protect the market, made up of consumer associations, contact center companies and workers' representatives, also welcomed the sanctions. The coalition brings together Assoutenti A.P.S., Codacons, the iConsumers Federation, the APS Citizen Defense Movement, the Urt Association, AssoCall-Confcommercio and the National Tertiary Ugl Federation. The organizations have announced that they will provide a platform dedicated to collecting user complaints and tracking telephone numbers. “The investigations confirm our alarms launched since November 2025: illegal telemarketing will stop by sanctioning those who provide networks to scammers, not by destroying the work of regular companies,” says the coalition.
The seven organizations therefore highlighted the importance of the Authority's intervention: "We extremely welcome Agcom's intervention - the seven organizations jointly declare - which marks a fundamental paradigm shift: for the first time, not only the unknown subjects who physically make spoofed calls in defiance of the rules are heavily sanctioned, but the telephone operators who allow them to transit on their networks". According to the Alliance, the 191 million fraudulent contacts blocked demonstrate that "illegality lurks in opaque networks and disguised foreign trafficking". The challenge, therefore, remains that of combining technological filters with effective controls on operators and tools that allow citizens to report suspicious calls.
