This is exactly correct. The phone companies could charge $9/minute to any call originator who wasn't showing the actual number on the call, and this activity would stop. Conversely, the FCC could make any telco that carries a robo call 50% liable for any fines associated with that robo call. That too would stop this crap in its tracks.
"The phone companies could charge $9/minute to any call originator who wasn't showing the actual number on the call"
How could this work in the current environment, given that:
- termination rates (the rates paid to the recipient's phone company for delivering the call) are regulated, and can't be set arbitrarily high
- phone companies have no way to check whether the outbound caller ID I present is also a valid inbound number for me
- even if they did, it's cheap to get a number in every area code (maybe $1/month/number) and cheap (1 cent per minute) to have calls to that number to delivered to me via VoIP (so I can rightly claim that the outbound caller ID matches my 'actual number')
If you could enforce that the outbound caller ID matched a valid inbound number, that would solve a lot of problems. (1) if a number is used for spam a lot it’s gonna get blocked; rotating through a bunch of numbers per area code does get somewhat more expensive over time (and they could probably enforce a fee for connecting/transferring a number). (2) it solves the problem where regular people get accused of spamming because they were spoofed, (3) it solves the problem of fake law enforcement or government agencies “calling” you from legit LE phone numbers.
Sure, spammers could still get tons of numbers, but straight up spoofing would vanish, and that’s a big enough win.
