"I get an annoying amount of spam" is a very different operational condition than "the FCC disconnected my provider so I can't make or receive calls"

It's not "The FCC disconnected my provider"; it's "The FCC removed my provider from their list of trusted providers". Presumably, when your provider's customers start switching to their competitors, someone on the compliance desk will wake up.

Plenty of those seem to be non-US providers; perhaps their attitude is "Oh, some foreign regulator. Not my problem". But the regulator isn't actually regulating these providers; it's just listing the ones that (claim to) have a mitigation plan, however feeble.

I don’t think they have a compliance desk (i.e. there is no one whose sole job is compliance and probably no one who dedicates any reasonable amount of time to compliance). These companies are probably a lot smaller than you think - that probably goes for those who aren’t listed in the news article too. The president, secretary, treasurer and director of Computer Integrated Solutions, for example, are all the same person. They probably don’t have the wherewithal to do the work necessary to comply.

Yeah, I know; I used the term "compliance desk" ironically. Sorry.

I just meant that someone is going to wake up, and realize that it's their problem, personally.

Or not.

> Yeah, I know; I used the term "compliance desk" ironically. Sorry.

Ah I see. I was just trying to cover my bases to avoid splitting hairs over what compliance desk means and get to the point about these companies probably not being sophisticated enough to comply (or appear to comply).

> I just meant that someone is going to wake up, and realize that it's their problem, personally.

> Or not.

The or not is kind of what concerns me, because this might be the end for a lot of these companies. Rather than just cutting people off, the FCC should take a role kind of like how the Fed does, but for telecom. Take over the carrier, continue operations, assist the legit subscribers with moving onto a compliant carrier and then shut it down. I'm not sure how number portability is affected when a carrier just shuts down, but it might not be pretty.

A lot of people take the "shouldn't have signed up with spammy telco!" stance here as if everyone has the gift of knowing how to vet a carrier. Hopefully not too many people (and ideally no people) get hurt by this sort of enforcement.

> Take over the carrier, continue operations, assist the legit subscribers with moving onto a compliant carrier and then shut it down.

I got the impression that a lot of these firms are overseas. E.g., SIA Tet seems to be Latvian. The FCC can't just direct these companies; but they can "advise" (lean on) domestic carriers not to deliver their traffic.

In that case, there's not much that can be done, and also I think there's a stronger assumption of those numbers being disposable (at least for calling US family members and whatnot, plus just not being used as much to make legit international calls). But as far as US companies, I think the FCC stepping in would be appropriate if the FCC authorizes blocking their traffic.

> network drowning in spam is not operational

The present telco network is very much operational. We don’t need an extremist response to spam from the FCC that causes making a phone call to acquire ‘aml attributes.

It’s to the point people don’t answer their phones due to the massive amount of spam calls. The network is losing relevance due to the lack of regulation.

As someone who never picks up their phone unless it's scheduled prior, I can confirm that people like me exist.

My wife has used manufacturer-provided settings to configure her iPhone to not even ring or give her a "missed call" notification when she gets a call from a number not in her contacts. It's not losing relevance, it's lost relevance so long ago that 5-year-old phones were designed with features that would win business from consumers who recognized that it was poorly regulated.

An element of our younger siblings' (Gen Z) entire culture is a fear of/avoidance towards making and taking phone calls. Network-effect ecosystems have grown and developed because POTS is so bad.

The only people left with landlines that lack caller ID and 'suspicious caller' filtering are the elderly, where they're continuously preyed upon by spammers.

Not only that, but even when the landline has Caller ID, there's no guarantee that the numbers you see have any relation to who is actually calling you. Even worse, landlines charge you extra for the privilege of inaccurate Caller ID. When I finally ditched my landline and moved it over to VoIP, AT&T's monthly fee for CID was greater than the entire monthly cost of my VoIP provider.

A shame, since if there was one thing the landline phone network was, it was reliable - in a way that cable can't even hope to match. Too bad that it got to be reliable for scammers as well.

> when she gets a call from a number not in her contacts. It's not losing relevance, it's lost relevance so long ago

This isn't the network losing relevance, she's literally still using it. She's just gatekeeping with her contacts.

I'm not saying we don't need to clamp down. But the downside of clamping down too hard is the calls from contacts in her address book not getting connected. That, and HN being littered with stories about people who are--for some random reason--unconnectable due to no fault of their own. That's the natural response if you let the "throw everyone in jail for the most minor infraction" crowd into the building.

Oh, so very much this. I pretty much won't answer phone calls from unfamiliar numbers, just because of the spam. I can't help but wonder how many important phone calls have been missed because of the spam tide.

There is no response too extreme in defense of the utility and relevance of the telephone system. The telephone system is one of modern humanity's crowning jewels, attacks against it are attacks against civilization itself. The government should be striking non-compliant telco executives with AGM-114R9X missiles (they've had several years of warning already) and then start working down the chain of command until the guilty telcos either surrender and comply or no longer exist. I am a moderate.

Given that it's not feasible for me to answer calls unless they come from someone I already know, a large aspect of the network is not operational in practice.