The FCC is demanding companies take action to stop nuisance ‘robocalls’

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• The US Federal Communications Commission vowed to take action
  if US telephone providers fail to curb the amount of “robocalls”
  next year. 
• FCC Chairman Ajit Pat demanded in a letter on Monday that
  these companies institute a technology to eliminate spam calls
  from phone numbers appearing to be real. 
• The letter was sent to executives at AT&T,
  Verizon, T-Mobile, Alphabet, Comcast, Cox Communications, Sprint,
  CenturyLink, Charter Communications, and Bandwith.
• YouMail, a California-based company that records data on
  robocalls, found that there were roughly 5.1 billion unwanted
  calls in the US last month ahead of November elections, Reuters
  cited. 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – US Federal Communications Commission
Chairman Ajit Pai on Monday wrote the chief executives of major
telephone service providers and other companies, demanding they
launch a system no later than 2019 to combat billions of
“robocalls” and other nuisance calls received monthly by American
consumers.

In May, Pai called on companies to adopt an
industry-developed “call authentication system” or standard for
the cryptographic signing of telephone calls aimed at ending the
use of illegitimate spoofed numbers from the telephone system.
Monday’s letters seek answers by Nov. 19 on the status of those
efforts.

The letters went to 13 companies including AT&T, Verizon,
T-Mobile US, Alphabet, Comcast, Cox Communications, Sprint,
CenturyLink, Charter Communications, Bandwith, and others.

Pai’s letters raised concerns about some companies current
efforts including Sprint, CenturyLink, Charter, Vonage, Telephone
and Data Systems Inc and its U.S. Cellular Corp unit and Frontier
Communications Corp. The letters to those firms said they do “not
yet have concrete plans to implement a robust call authentication
framework,” citing FCC staff.

The authentication framework “digitally validates the handoff of
phone calls passing through the complex web of networks, allowing
the phone company of the consumer receiving the call to verify
that a call is from the person supposedly making it,” the FCC
said.

YouMail, a company that blocks robocalls and tracks them,
estimated there were 5.1 billion unwanted calls last month, up
from 3.4 billion in April.

The FCC has taken a number of actions to try to deter robocalls
or automated, prerecorded calls that regulators have labeled a
“scourge.”

“We need call authentication to become a reality — it’s the best
way to ensure that consumers can answer their phones with
confidence. By this time next year, I expect that consumers will
begin to see this on their phones,” Pai said.

“I am calling on those falling behind to catch up … If it does
not appear that this system is on track to get up and running
next year, then we will take action to make sure that it does.”

FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, earlier this
year called on the FCC to set a deadline and noted “Canada went
ahead and set a 2019 deadline to put this technology in place. We
should be doing the same as our neighbors to the north.”