The obvious answer is the correct answer: politicians. That's who own the FCC. Why is this relevant? Because it has taken so long and the technology has been available for decades. Consider this nifty little box produced by a long defunct company (yes, it is that old):
This attaches to hardwired landlines, processes caller ID, then automatically answers any blocked number holding the line to 20 seconds of silence. Waste the telemarketers' time, not yours. And you can wild-card entire exchanges or area codes. Don't know anyone in Idaho? Block all telemarketers who've taken up virtual residence in that state.
This bit of kit was built in the era of touch-tone desk phones. Now we live in the age of cell-phones, VOIP and online access to all manner of telephony features and services. All except one. No carrier allows subscribers a flexible, comprehensive white-list, grey-list, black-list capability. With today's technology subs should be a click away from building their own no-call lists, their own "always ring" lists and their own call diversion to voice mail.
The only reason we still suffer from floods of robo-calls is because the politicians don't want to empower us to block their campaign calls. Thank the gods of Silicon Valley that other communication technology is far ahead of the slow-witted politicians. We can mark their emails as spam and let AI automagically dump them in the spam bin. Where they belong.
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| DASTalk Call Blocker |
This bit of kit was built in the era of touch-tone desk phones. Now we live in the age of cell-phones, VOIP and online access to all manner of telephony features and services. All except one. No carrier allows subscribers a flexible, comprehensive white-list, grey-list, black-list capability. With today's technology subs should be a click away from building their own no-call lists, their own "always ring" lists and their own call diversion to voice mail.
The only reason we still suffer from floods of robo-calls is because the politicians don't want to empower us to block their campaign calls. Thank the gods of Silicon Valley that other communication technology is far ahead of the slow-witted politicians. We can mark their emails as spam and let AI automagically dump them in the spam bin. Where they belong.
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