Phone companies pledge to fight robocalls

Attorneys general from every state are working with 12 major telecom companies to tackle a truly bipartisan issue: the nuisance of robocalls. The number of automated phone calls in the United States rose to 48 billion in 2018, and the Federal Communications Commission receives more than 200,000 complaints per year about unwanted calls.

What’s the plan? Telecom companies are pledging to implement new “Anti-Robocall Principles,” which include offering customers free call blocking, improving call authentication, and working with states to investigate the origins of suspicious calls. The agreement doesn’t stop illegal calls from taking place but bolsters efforts to track down the culprits. So far, companies like AT&T, Verizon Communications, T-Mobile USA, Sprint Corp., Comcast, and others have agreed to participate.

Dig deeper: Read Onize Ohikere’s 2015 report about previous (unsuccessful) FCC efforts to deal with robocalls. From the WORLD archives, Andrée Seu Peterson wrote about the annoyance of scam calls.