Call-blocking tools for unwanted robocalls are effective and available to consumers at little to no cost, the Federal Communications Commissions said in a report Thursday.
Billions of unwanted robocalls are blocked yearly at almost no cost to consumers, the commission said in its report. Labeling is another tool that lets consumers choose which calls to answer by identifying them as “spam” or “scam likely,” the report said.
The report is the commission’s latest effort to protect American consumers from unwanted and possibly illegal robocalls. The report follows the FCC’s 2019 Call Blocking Declaratory Ruling, which allowed voice service providers to block invalid, unallocated, or unused numbers at a network level.
“We will continue to prioritize the protection of consumers from scams and unwanted robocalls,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement accompanying the report.
The report highlighted commission enforcement against Covid-19-related robocalls. The agency said that it and the Federal Trade Commission were able to eliminate coronavirus scam calls from six gateway providers.
The FCC said that there have been few instances of false-positive blocking, and no instances in which any of the programs blocked a call from an emergency provider.
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