How one phone company plans to battle robocalls

(InvestigateTV) — Receiving robocalls and robotexts are more than a mild annoyance – they pose very real threats to Americans.

Last fall, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) implemented policies to combat robocalls and texts, which make up about four billion calls a month.

Alan Jones, the chief network officer of telecommunications company C Spire, explained why his company is fighting robocalls and robotexts.

“Any time that a robocall gets through or a spam call – it’s annoying! It’s not a good customer experience,” Jones said. “That’s why we think it’s important to really take that stance to block them. To get rid of them.”

Jones said blocking these calls means staying one step ahead of scammers who constantly change tactics.

“When we take things like, the ability to flag a call that does get through as spam – we want to make sure that’s done, and we’re not going to charge a customer for that,” he explained.

Since the implementation of Stir/Shaken – a set of protocols established by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to combat caller ID spoofing – some consumer advocates say the industry’s response still falls short.

Research from the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) found that half of the nation’s largest phone companies received Ds or Fs for their robocall protections.

In that report, C Spire received an “F.” PIRG said C Spire did respond to their questions – but not until three weeks after the report was released. And even with that response, PIRG told us the company would have scored no higher than a “D” because some of its answers were ambiguous.

“I know there were some reports out that if people didn’t respond to an email that was sent in, they were automatically flagged as failing,” Jones answered. “So, I want to make sure the reporting is right cause that annoys people too. I do think the one thing that’s really not understood well is just how creative these scammers and spammers get. They pop up as new companies. The creativeness to launch a new company, strictly for the ability to make these kinds of robocalls and spam calls – it’s insane what people will do to be a bad actor there.”

One thing Jones said their company is leaning on: artificial intelligence.

“It is a major piece. And a major force for our company,” he explained. “If you’ve got a system that can use machine learning – can use AI to better track and to better identify – it can identify something a whole lot faster than we can!!”

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