Tech Giants Strike Against Robocall | TechTree.com

Tech Giants Strike Against Robocall

Hopes are to develop and adopt new tools and solutions to crack down 'robocalls'.

 

Major technology giants like Alphabet, AT&T, Apple, and Verizon have joined hands to fight against 'robocalls', automated, pre-recorded phone calls. It seems like these companies have also met the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to discuss their issues. Calling themselves as 'Robocall Strike Force', the group is working hard to bring in and adopt new tools and solutions.

According to the statement by Randall Stephenson, the Chairman and CEO of AT&T, the 'Strike Force' will be meeting the FCC by October 19 this year to discuss concrete plans 'to accelerate the development and adoption of new tools and solutions', as Reuters reported. The main task for the group, would be to block calls from 'spoofed' numbers by creating a 'do not originate' list to stop the impersonators from duplicating their origins with legitimate phone numbers from banks, governments, and others. In fact, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has urged everyone in the group to take new action to block these 'robocalls' which often are used as a popular method by telemarketeers and other scam artists.

Stephenson had been putting forward his word on the complexities and breadth of the problems at hand. He said, "This is going to require more than individual company initiatives and one-off blocking apps." He then added, "Robocallers are a formidable adversary, notoriously hard to stop."

The FCC does not require robocall blocking and filtering, but has strongly encouraged phone service providers to offer those services at no charge. The strike force brings together carriers, device makers, operating system developers, network designers and the government, towards a common issue. 

Stephenson also explained, "We have calls that are perfectly legal, but unwanted, like telemarketers and public opinion surveyors. At the other end of the spectrum, we have millions of calls that are blatantly illegal." He did mention that technical experts representing the companies involved had 'preliminary conversations about short- and longer-term initiatives' which clearly the aggression with which the issue is being perused. However, Joan Marsh, the AT&T Vice-President of Federal regulatory issues, was a bit more skeptical about the problem, and called the problem more 'complicated'. "We have been wrangling with this problem long enough to know there is no silver bullet," she said. "Nothing by itself is going to do it," she added.

[Image Via Twilio]


TAGS: Robocalls, Automated Calls, Pre Recorded Calls, Strike Force

 
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