D.C. researcher points out the challenges in developing policy related to robocalls -including the good, bad, wanted and unwanted.
10/15/2019 9:00
While robocalls have built up a bad reputation especially among consumers, it is less obvious that 60 percent are in fact “legitimate” robocalls — such as the ones that come from pharmacies, schools, or weather alerts, according to an op-ed titled, “Robocalls May Be Annoying, But Not All are Bad,” published in The Hill.
Not distinguishing between the useful and legal robocalls and the annoying and illegal robocalls could cause major problems for consumers, businesses with legitimate uses for robocalls, and ultimately on how enforcement agencies and wireless providers deal with the issue, according to op-ed writer Dr. Krisztina Pusok, director of policy and research at the American Consumer Institute.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) receives around 200,000 complaints each year about robocalls — by far the biggest consumer complaint that the agency has to deal with on a regular basis. As a result, FCC’s Chairman, Ajit Pai, has made battling this nuisance one of the commission’s top priorities. To address the problem, the FCC has recently proposed new measures that would enable mobile carriers to block robocalls. One such measure would let wireless carriers automatically block unwanted robocalls for their subscribers unless they opt out, the article stated.
But dealing with this issue is not as clear-cut as it might seem. To continue reading, click here.