The Federal Communications Commission has been fighting the problem of robocalls for a number of years. Despite their efforts, still, these calls get through and cause problems for subscribers. Now, the Federal Commission wants to make this a legal thing for phone companies to block unwanted robocalls by default. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has gone on to circulate a declaratory ruling. If this gets adopted, then that would give carriers permission to develop new tools for blocking these kinds of calls. The ruling might also allow consumers to completely prohibit calls from those numbers, which are not on their contact lists.

The proposal for bringing this change up targets spam robocalls, which hijack legitimate, in-service numbers. Carriers including Comcast, T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon are working their way to deploying STIR/SHAKEN technology. It helps to label calls from authentic numbers. Regarding this, the FCC has said that many voice providers have held themselves back from developing call blocking tools. This is because it was not clear if those tools were indeed legal under the rules framed by the Federal Communications Commission. The Chairman of FCC, Ajit Pai said that the FCC would provide voice service providers the legal confirmation they require to block unwanted calls from the outset.

This would allow the consumers to never ever receive these kinds of calls in the future. The systems would have protections against blocking emergency calls and the consumers will also be able to opt themselves out of call blocking if they intend to. Still, people should not expect that robocalls would go away at once. The FCC would consider the proposal at their meeting on 6^th June. Even if it gets the desired approval, still it is difficult to say when it will come into effect.