Phone Network Modernization Needed to Help Consumers Screen Calls, AEI Scholar Says
The phone network needs to be modernized to help consumers block unwanted calls while facilitating legitimate calls, said Gus Hurwitz, an American Enterprise Institute visiting scholar. Until the "outdated" Telephone Consumer Protection Act is updated, the FCC needs to apply…
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the law in a more effective way because its "largely laudable" efforts have been "too limited," Hurwitz said in a blog post Friday. The agency efforts "place too much emphasis on those making these calls and too little on how the architecture of the phone network makes these calls possible," he wrote. "They simultaneously are only incomplete solutions to stopping the problem of 'bad calls' and also unduly burden 'good calls,' subjecting companies with legitimate need to call consumers that want to play by the rules in making those calls to substantial liability for simple and honest mistakes. A better approach would be to update the telephone network from its current 1980s protocols to give consumers greater control over who can call them." Caller ID technology was "bolted on top of the 1980s architecture -- but because they were add-on technologies, they were designed in a way that allows callers to hide or lie about their information," he wrote, citing the increasing dominance of mobile phones as another complication for TCPA enforcement.