A lot of people point out that telecom companies should do something but aren't because it's lucrative for them or too expensive to fix.
Are telecom companies not realizing how much they are hurting themselves with this in the long term? People will stop using phone numbers altogether. Using the phone has become such a pain, at least in the US, that whenever I can, I used different ways of communicating. WhatsApp, iMesage, Skype, etc. The incessant robocalls have definitely motivated me to move away from traditional phone calls faster than I would otherwise.
Lastly, maybe this is what these companies want, i.e., that I just use their data plan, but then that makes me way less likely to stay loyal.
They are slow to act because it is unclear whether it is justified in the law for them to block what they believe is spam or if a customer wants to receive a call.
Section 202 of Telecommunications Act details that telecoms cannot discriminate connections so they have been unwilling to block spam if it can lead to breaking the law[1]. The FCC has been trying to change that by rolling out new guidance on what can definitely be blocked[2]. One of the new rules defines a new legal safe harbor for carriers that block calls that are unauthenticated using a new protocol that is expected to be rolled out by year end, 2019.
They don't have to block anything. Just make sure that any caller id number is validated and registered to the company making calls. I shouldn't be receiving calls from local numbers that are actually Indian call centers threatening that the police are on their way unless I pay my IRS bill with iTunes gift cards.
Services like twilio avoid this easily by simply requiring me to purchase the callback number or at least validate that I have control of the callback number I want to use.
As I understand it, there is no way to validate caller ID when it comes from another carrier. They're testing STIR/SHAKEN which supposedly fixed this, although I'm unclear on how long that will really take to roll out and actually be turned. I'm also unsure how well it will actually work, I haven't looked at how it will be implemented.
While robocalling should be blocked, they need to give consumers power to block their own calls by forwarding the originator information. The CallerID simply allows for deception, but if you provide the originator information and I know the call is coming from a country where I don't know anyone (whether it be the number, a voip address, or a shady phone company) I can preemptively block them adblock/ubo style and share that list collectively with my friends and the internet. Anything short is only going to delay the death of the relevancy of the phone number.
"Are telecom companies not realizing how much they are hurting themselves"
After seeing cable companies fail to get into the internet, I'm convinced companies try to stop progress instead of embracing it. They don't see progress as an opportunity, but rather as a threat. They don't realize how much they are hurting themselves.
I read an interesting article on here about the rise of the cell phone camera, the amount of R&D into it compared to traditional cameras, and how slowly traditional camera manufacturers have progressed. Sure, cell phones have to overcome a smaller sensor... but traditional camera sales have been obliterated.
Steven Sasson invented the first digital camera (and a device to display it on) in 1975 while working at R&D at Kodak. He had a fully functional DSLR by 1989, complete with memory cards. Kodak never released his work, never manufactured that camera. They kept the patent of the work and sat on it, and when others tried to innovate and create a digital camera, Kodak sued them with that patent and kept suing people right up until the patent ran out in 2007. By 2012, the company was bankrupt.
Innovation, true innovation that really pushes technology forward, is anathema to the average business.
>While I appreciate how hard it would be to implement properly
Isn't that part of what it means to acquire a patent? Trying to get a patent on something that I don't yet know how to actually implement should be denied, right?
Nope. It's actually best practice to get one even without an implementation because usually the threat of a lawsuit is enough of a chilling effect to keep the competition guessing.
Of course the risk is that if someone else challenges you on it, and you can't provide the implementation, you can have your patent invalidated.
At least that's my understanding of the tactics of patent warfare.
Selling just under 1000 refitted nikon cameras over 4 years doesn't seem like pushing digital cameras hard. They even brought the nikon bodies through retail.[0]
If that's not dragging your feet I don't know what is. They could have defined the marked for professional digital cameras. Instead they just proved that a digital nikon would work nicely.
> Kodak never released his work, never manufactured that camera. They kept the patent of the work and sat on it, and when others tried to innovate and create a digital camera, Kodak sued them with that patent and kept suing people right up until the patent ran out in 2007. By 2012, the company was bankrupt.
I bought a Kodak digital camera in the 90s, and other brands too, so I doubt that version of events.
You're right there's a difference and it wasn't a DSLR. The comment I responded to wasn't entirely clear that Kodak only blocked the development of a digital DSLR, if that's what was meant.
> when others tried to innovate and create a digital camera, Kodak sued them
This is especially true of big companies or companies that only have a few competitors, which is why it's high time to save American capitalism with a round of good old fashioned trust busting.
Somewhat related, can anyone explain why in the world Fox would allow the entire World Series to be sponsored by YouTube Live? They have to be a competitive threat, no?
I don’t believe Fox is a competitor with YouTube Live; doesn’t YTL include Fox as one of its streaming channels? Particularly with NBC’s Hulu and ABC’s Disney+, they may actually see YTL taking off as a good thing.
Fox probably has very little choice. YouTube TV's sponsorship agreement is with MLB. I can't imagine MLB's World Series broadcast contract with Fox gives them much if any say in the matter.
I'm already there wanting to stop using phone numbers. So. Much. There.
I haven't had a "land line" in multiple-decades. My short list of "the next thing" requires:
- Ability to install on a mobile device without any connection to a "phone number." Phone numbers in my mind are dead.
- Skip the synchronous social convention of calling. Everything should be async by default. You don't ever cause someone's device to interrupt them. This is already culturally "accepted" with SMS. Unopened messages are deleted after some number of days.
- With permission, these asynchronous messages should be forwardable. You give permission in advance of course, and then you can avoid having to repeat yourself again and again.
- TMDA style whitelisting for unknown public keys wishing for contact. Addresses need some kind of seniority (older than 30-days) and some reasonable integration into the network at large (vouching connections between other people with "skin in the game", akin to a shared reputation--If I could remember the name of that early social network that tried to do this, avogato.org? Something like that.)
- Mesh networking forever. Decentralize it all.
This is not something that I think can be a "startup," because this needs to be a protocol, not tied to any firm. If anyone's software works with the protocol, then let the "best installable" win. The closest thing to this right now is Scuttlebutt protocol and if someone could re-introduce contact sharing via "bumping" (using the accelerometer and GPS location and time together) devices together to exchange public keys, that particular bit of UX could go a long way to making it easier to adopt. However, the worst part of Scuttlebutt's capabilities has been the storage consumption for very popular identities that often consumes all the available memory on smaller devices. It needs data-storage hygenics--some way for the end-user to state what kind of data they want to keep and what they wish to ignore.
> I haven't had a "land line" in multiple-decades.
I'd love to have a land line but it completely stopped working decades ago. After deregulation, no one was responsible.
Countless attempts to get anyone to fix it were in vain.
This year I saw a thick line completely knocked down by a fallen tree. I called the power company. They said it was a telephone line not a power line. And that there wasn't anyone left for them to contact to get it fixed. Asking around I found it actually didn't matter. No one was actually using it. No one has land lines any more. The technology is obsolete, irrelevant, and should be removed.
It's funny how some regions insist on not burying their communication lines. Or maybe funny how others insist on burying. Because like so many things it's a tradeoff, what you win in reliability nines you loose in bandwidth trailing zeros. Upgrading underground infrastructure is so damn expensive.
I live in Central Kansas. In our house there's next to no cell service. We could switch providers, but then we'd be in a dead area every time we drove a few miles. No carrier has good coverage in our area. Without a landline we would even have trouble calling 911. Thankfully POTS is still alive here at least.
Until I moved to my current locale, I had pretty reliable landline service from century link and frontier, I've not tried to order a land line from AT&T yet, but it's theoretically possible.
They could easily fine the carrier that is interconnecting the robo callers. The telecom lobby doesn’t want to fix the issues since they make money from robo callers and also selling services to block the robo callers.
The souce may very well be outdide the US, with no sure way to spot spam. I'm all against imperial hegemony and all, but i doubt the UN eould care if they sent some stealth bombers after the spamers.
International carriers still interconnect with a us carrier to deliver the calls. Spam is really easy to detect. Short call durations and lots of different call to numbers.
Even just giving origin information would help, if the local end of the interconnect ensured calls show the international dial-code as a minimum then that would help; instead we get (in UK) international calls (India, primarily) with caller ID showing a local number (sometimes your own number, I think) ... the interconnect certainly shouldn't be facilitating that.
SS7 its the primarily utilized protocol stack nowadays. The PTSN (Public Telephone Switching Network) and the Internet have been combined for a while now.
The problematic part of SS7 is it allows for setting arbitrary unauthenticated origination info in the rough equivalent of a "From" field in the initiation process.
There are attempts ongoing to attempt to implement a "Web of Trust" layer a la TLS on in front of the preexisting telephony infrastructure in the form of STIR/SHAKEN, but it'll have some of the same warts that current "Web of Trust" implementations now currently suffer.
It was my understanding that in PSTN at country-level boundaries the operators choose to forward calls, and do billing and such recording: at that point they decide whether to put the call to the local country network or not. If the call has meta-data as if its come from the local country then they could drop the call request, but they establish the voice call [because call senders pay more than call receivers, presumably].
> fine the telecoms for allowing the illegal calls
You can certainly fine companies for making illegal calls. But you can't easily fine telcos for allowing them. That requires you to know the call is going to be illegal.
That is exactley why centralized solutions are winning the market over decentralized ones. No one wants to deal with evil actors within decentralized system.
Users are even ready to give up open protocol for proprietary one (imessage, etc).
They are indeed hurting their business for short term profits. Due to a number of robocalls I receive, I decided to ignore and block all calls from landline numbers. 99% of landline call I receive, are from robocalls these days. If someone wants to call me with a landline number, they must inform me first and I will store their number on my phone.
In my country, landlines starts with certain code. So I simply ignore and block any number that starts with those code. I hate robocalls. I wish there was a way to reject all calls coming from numbers who aren't on my contact list.
My phone is always on silent. Unless I am expecting a very important call. I prefer not to be notified. I am even tempted to invest some time and write an app that does exactly what I want -> Reject all calls from unknown numbers.
this comment has been a rollecoaster. I've been downvoted I think 6 times and had an equal amount of upvotes. Speaks volume about the composition of this forum.
Many services and businesses will not do business with you if you do not have a phone number. The most common example would be delivery services, but there are many others.
Have people been able to get around these limitations? and how is it done? I hate having a phone as much as anyone else.
Yes, there is already quite a bit of flexibility to move with your number. Maybe "loyalty" is not the best word.
What I meant to say is that, right now, my provider is the one who has substantial control over my main id of communication, i.e. phone number. This adds additional friction to move to a different provider, but also move across borders and so on. As my way of communicating moves onto other services, the telcos do not control my id anymore. Everything becomes easier and less friction.
For example, if I could, I would probably buy a data plan from one telco and a phone number from another, and I would experiment with my data much more, shop around etc.
> there is already quite a bit of flexibility to move with your number
Oh yeah?
I've been paying for number portability for I guess at least 30 years.
I was just told by my cell provider this week that as of next month the 3G networks are being shut down and I have to buy a new phone from them.
I said sure, I already have an unactivated no-contract phone I got on clearance, let's transfer my number to that one.
They said, sorry, no can do, you can only transfer the number to a phone you bought from us.
I said wait I've been paying for number transferability, something I didn't even want, for literally decades, and you're saying I can't do it?
In the end I bought a $15 flip phone, switched carriers, and now have a stupid new number.
Number portability is a fiction and a scam. I paid that fee for 30 years and it did nothing. Fuck everyone involved in making me pay for that scam. Almost but not quite as bad as insurance, another total scam that never pays and is designed for suckers.
Are you in the US? I assume not because I have never heard of a "number transferability" fee, in the US it is required that carriers allow numbers to be ported out by law, for free
Are telecom companies not realizing how much they are hurting themselves with this in the long term? People will stop using phone numbers altogether. Using the phone has become such a pain, at least in the US, that whenever I can, I used different ways of communicating. WhatsApp, iMesage, Skype, etc. The incessant robocalls have definitely motivated me to move away from traditional phone calls faster than I would otherwise.
Lastly, maybe this is what these companies want, i.e., that I just use their data plan, but then that makes me way less likely to stay loyal.