Click to Skip Ad
Closing in...

FCC tells phone carriers to have a system ready to combat robocalls by 2019

Published Nov 6th, 2018 1:57PM EST
Robocalls
Image: Jacquelyn Martin/AP/Shutterstock

If you buy through a BGR link, we may earn an affiliate commission, helping support our expert product labs.

Robocalls have become so frequent and unavoidable in recent months that US Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai this week sent a letter to thirteen major phone carrier CEOs ordering them to have a system in place to handle the issue that affects millions of Americans daily by 2019 at the latest.

According to Reuters, Pai asked for companies to start using a “call authentication system” to stop the usage of spoofed numbers back in May, and six months later, he wants to know how those efforts have been proceeding. The letters, which were sent Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Alphabet, Comcast, Cox, and Charter (to name a few) seek updates from all thirteen companies on their progress by November 19th.

In his letters, Pai specifically cites Sprint, CenturyLink, Charter and others, as companies he is concerned do “not yet have concrete plans to implement a robust call authentication framework.“ That call 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.”

YouMail, a company which blocks and tracks robocalls, estimates that 5.1 billion unwanted calls were received in October, up from 3.4 billion in April. I know that I personally get between two and four calls from spoofed numbers a day, and sometimes more than twenty a week. The FCC is right to call it a “scourge.”

“We need call authentication to become a reality,” said Pai, “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.”

Jacob Siegal
Jacob Siegal Associate Editor

Jacob Siegal is Associate Editor at BGR, having joined the news team in 2013. He has over a decade of professional writing and editing experience, and helps to lead our technology and entertainment product launch and movie release coverage.