About your car’s extended warranty… If you’re like 80% of Americans, you don’t even consider answering a call from an unknown number. Spam and robocalls (which make up more than a quarter of all US phone calls) have changed the way consumers use phones — and left carriers and regulators holding for solutions. Last week AT&T, in partnership with TransUnion, announced a branded call service that verifies rings from legit businesses by displaying their name and logo onscreen. If other carriers begin using the tech, it could make a dent in a major problem:
Straight to voicemail: US consumers get 4B robocalls a month, and the FCC received 1.2M complaints about robocalls last year. Unwanted calls are the agency’s top consumer complaint.
AI boost: After 25K AI-generated robocalls impersonating President Biden (urging voters not to vote) spread through New Hampshire last month, the FCC proposed making genAI calls illegal.
It’s not an easy fix… The FCC’s implemented some semi-successful robocall countermeasures, including mandating that carriers like Verizon, Comcast, and T-Mobile implement anti-scam call tech in 2021 (the result: just an 8% drop in robocalls). Recently the agency closed loopholes that made robocalls easier. But broader fixes fall into tricky gray areas: carriers don’t get to decide which calls Americans can receive, and some spoofed numbers and robocalls have valid uses (think: pharmacy notifications and calls from delivery drivers).
Spam solutions might require a conference call… The goal of a lot of spam and robocalls isn't to annoy people: it’s to scam them out of $$. The success of AT&T’s branded calls service will depend on carriers and businesses opting in. Privacy experts say that targeting unwanted calls will require more input and collaboration from telecom cos, social networks, digital pay apps, and lawmakers.