5 ms·

I've always been confused as to why the phone companies refused to put any effort into this. Do they make significant money from spam calls? I can't see how t

I've always been confused as to why the phone companies refused to put any effort into this. Do they make significant money from spam calls? I can't see how that would be. Does anyone have any info? In fact, when nomo robo (www.nomorobo.com) came up with a pretty good solution (they won an FCC robo blocking contest ), the phone companies lobbied congress to shut it down. No only were they not helping, they were blocking progress from others.

rb808 10y ago
It was one of the main reasons I gave up my land line. A few calls every day is pretty annoying. I guess the article above describes the phone companies are working on it.
- distances 10y ago
  Do they not call on mobiles then? I've never received a robocall so I don't really know how this works.
  - dietrichepp 10y ago
    It's illegal to robocall a mobile number without permission. I still get a few per month.
    - the_watcher 10y ago
      I get a few per week. Sometimes a few per day. If your phone number has ever been publicly available, those breaking the law can potentially get access to it. And all of them sell the lists to others in the space.
      - superuser2 10y ago
        300 million Americans, 10 digits 0-9. Even dialing totally blind you'd expect a ~3% hit rate. Limit that to actual area codes (public information) and bias it towards the more populous ones, and you could probably do considerably better. I'm not sure how important lists are.
    - gcb0 10y ago
      tell that to the avg 2/day calls i get
  - ghaff 10y ago
    I get more on landline than mobile although YMMV and the delta seems to be shrinking based on anec-data. It has gotten to the point with mobile though that I find I do need to follow "Do Not Disturb" hygiene when traveling internationally lest I get awakened in the middle of the night.
  - ams6110 10y ago
    I have not had a landline in years. I get several robocalls a day on my mobile. Any caller I don't have in my address book gets sent to voicemail.
- jgalt212 10y ago
  As a data point, I get more robocalls on my cell than home phone. Both numbers have been registered with the ineffective donotcall.gov
mhurron 10y ago
> Do they make significant money from spam calls? There is also the other side, do they lose any money from spam calls? If they don't or it's negligible, they aren't going to be open to spending money to block them.
- jimmydddd 10y ago
  Good point. They could offer a small competitive advantage though. Many people in my neighborhood constantly change between Optimum and FIOS. Maybe if one had robo blocking, it would slightly tip the scales in their favor?
  - jonknee 10y ago
    Do people in your neighborhood have home phone service?
    - jimmydddd 10y ago
      Yes. I'm in the 'burbs. Everyone has Internet based land lines.
      - justinlardinois 10y ago
        Are you in an area with poor cellular reception or something?
        jimmydddd 10y ago
        Nope. NY area. Great cell reception. If you're a family living in the 'burbs, it just can be convenient in many ways to maintain a redundant land line. We have all the "cord cutter" services an apartment dwelling millennial would have, but we have the cord stuff too.
- ghaff 10y ago
  Perhaps, it's getting to that point. In my case, if I decide to drop landline as part of my Comcast bundle one of these days--I keep it for various non-essential but useful reasons--the number of spam calls I get will probably be a factor.
superuser2 10y ago
I wonder if, as common carriers, they are even allowed to arbitrarily block calls.
bkruse 10y ago
They do not make money from it. Actually, robocalls are really looked down upon in the industry, as the traffic is not profitable. Imagine this - telco carriers are charging per minute. No monthly fee, no setup fee, no per-call fees, only per minute with 6 second minimums and 6 second increments. Now imagine all the robocalls where they keep calls open for 3 seconds ( enough to determine if it's a live human or answering machine ). That carrier has a lot of resource utilization to "setup" a call, but after that, there is not much that the carrier needs to do. In order to combat this, all tier-1 carriers now have ASR (answer ratio) and ACD (average call duration) minimums. In addition, if you have more than ~10% of your calls less than 6 seconds, you get an ADDITIONAL 1-2 cent per call surcharge. That's a lot of money given that my average cost of long distance is .17 cents ($0.0017) per minute. It's the second tier carriers that is "blending" this traffic with good traffic in order to get the minimums then charge the telemarketers much higher costs per minute.
- walrus01 10y ago
  Related to this there is now a whole subset of shady/gray market VoIP, SIP trunking providers who specialize in "dialer" traffic and calls which have low ACD. They specifically market to outbound call centers and automated dialer traffic and have their own special rate tiers for such traffic. Conversely there are a number of large, more ethical SIP providers who will cut you off if your outbound traffic consistently falls into the same pattern with low ACD. "No dialer traffic" is turning up in Terms of Service agreements with greater frequency.
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  Yep and it's a huge business for them. (I work in this industry, with these kinds of companies.) It results in great deals for non-robo callers, as they are desperate to get good conversational traffic to add to the mix. It depends on which provider, but the dialer penalties usually aren't that harsh. Regardless, everyone's cautious. And they'll mix right to the limit. Put on restrictions on how many times a number can call? They'll switch up numbers and keep the mix perfect. It creates a huge opportunity. If the FCC was serious, they'd just start cracking down and push liability on down the line. Then no one would want to take the risk. It's high volume, so without huge deposits and guarantees, no one would touch it.
taf2 10y ago
Last I heard they have integrations with all the major telephone providers - comcast, verizon etc...? Where did you hear about the congress lobbying shutting it down?
- jimmydddd 10y ago
  >> "where did you hear ..." You are correct in that I think they (telcos) lost. I believe the founder of nomrobo had to testify before congress. He emailed a petition to users a year or two ago, asking us to write supportive testimonials. I think he presented the testimonials to congress and won.

rb808 10y ago

It was one of the main reasons I gave up my land line. A few calls every day is pretty annoying. I guess the article above describes the phone companies are working on it.

distances 10y ago
Do they not call on mobiles then? I've never received a robocall so I don't really know how this works.
- dietrichepp 10y ago
  It's illegal to robocall a mobile number without permission. I still get a few per month.
  - the_watcher 10y ago
    I get a few per week. Sometimes a few per day. If your phone number has ever been publicly available, those breaking the law can potentially get access to it. And all of them sell the lists to others in the space.
    - superuser2 10y ago
      300 million Americans, 10 digits 0-9. Even dialing totally blind you'd expect a ~3% hit rate. Limit that to actual area codes (public information) and bias it towards the more populous ones, and you could probably do considerably better. I'm not sure how important lists are.
  - gcb0 10y ago
    tell that to the avg 2/day calls i get
- ghaff 10y ago
  I get more on landline than mobile although YMMV and the delta seems to be shrinking based on anec-data. It has gotten to the point with mobile though that I find I do need to follow "Do Not Disturb" hygiene when traveling internationally lest I get awakened in the middle of the night.
- ams6110 10y ago
  I have not had a landline in years. I get several robocalls a day on my mobile. Any caller I don't have in my address book gets sent to voicemail.
jgalt212 10y ago
As a data point, I get more robocalls on my cell than home phone. Both numbers have been registered with the ineffective donotcall.gov

mhurron 10y ago

> Do they make significant money from spam calls? There is also the other side, do they lose any money from spam calls? If they don't or it's negligible, they aren't going to be open to spending money to block them.

jimmydddd 10y ago
Good point. They could offer a small competitive advantage though. Many people in my neighborhood constantly change between Optimum and FIOS. Maybe if one had robo blocking, it would slightly tip the scales in their favor?
- jonknee 10y ago
  Do people in your neighborhood have home phone service?
  - jimmydddd 10y ago
    Yes. I'm in the 'burbs. Everyone has Internet based land lines.
    - justinlardinois 10y ago
      Are you in an area with poor cellular reception or something?
      - jimmydddd 10y ago
        Nope. NY area. Great cell reception. If you're a family living in the 'burbs, it just can be convenient in many ways to maintain a redundant land line. We have all the "cord cutter" services an apartment dwelling millennial would have, but we have the cord stuff too.
ghaff 10y ago
Perhaps, it's getting to that point. In my case, if I decide to drop landline as part of my Comcast bundle one of these days--I keep it for various non-essential but useful reasons--the number of spam calls I get will probably be a factor.

superuser2 10y ago

I wonder if, as common carriers, they are even allowed to arbitrarily block calls.

bkruse 10y ago

They do not make money from it. Actually, robocalls are really looked down upon in the industry, as the traffic is not profitable. Imagine this - telco carriers are charging per minute. No monthly fee, no setup fee, no per-call fees, only per minute with 6 second minimums and 6 second increments. Now imagine all the robocalls where they keep calls open for 3 seconds ( enough to determine if it's a live human or answering machine ). That carrier has a lot of resource utilization to "setup" a call, but after that, there is not much that the carrier needs to do. In order to combat this, all tier-1 carriers now have ASR (answer ratio) and ACD (average call duration) minimums. In addition, if you have more than ~10% of your calls less than 6 seconds, you get an ADDITIONAL 1-2 cent per call surcharge. That's a lot of money given that my average cost of long distance is .17 cents ($0.0017) per minute. It's the second tier carriers that is "blending" this traffic with good traffic in order to get the minimums then charge the telemarketers much higher costs per minute.

walrus01 10y ago
Related to this there is now a whole subset of shady/gray market VoIP, SIP trunking providers who specialize in "dialer" traffic and calls which have low ACD. They specifically market to outbound call centers and automated dialer traffic and have their own special rate tiers for such traffic. Conversely there are a number of large, more ethical SIP providers who will cut you off if your outbound traffic consistently falls into the same pattern with low ACD. "No dialer traffic" is turning up in Terms of Service agreements with greater frequency.
MichaelGG 10y ago
Yep and it's a huge business for them. (I work in this industry, with these kinds of companies.) It results in great deals for non-robo callers, as they are desperate to get good conversational traffic to add to the mix. It depends on which provider, but the dialer penalties usually aren't that harsh. Regardless, everyone's cautious. And they'll mix right to the limit. Put on restrictions on how many times a number can call? They'll switch up numbers and keep the mix perfect. It creates a huge opportunity. If the FCC was serious, they'd just start cracking down and push liability on down the line. Then no one would want to take the risk. It's high volume, so without huge deposits and guarantees, no one would touch it.

taf2 10y ago

Last I heard they have integrations with all the major telephone providers - comcast, verizon etc...? Where did you hear about the congress lobbying shutting it down?

jimmydddd 10y ago
>> "where did you hear ..." You are correct in that I think they (telcos) lost. I believe the founder of nomrobo had to testify before congress. He emailed a petition to users a year or two ago, asking us to write supportive testimonials. I think he presented the testimonials to congress and won.