A number of the largest telecom companies in the world will be participating next week at a joint expo from the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission aimed at eliminating robocalls.
AT&T, T-Mobile, Comcast, and Verizon are confirmed as participants for next week’s Stop Illegal Robocalls Expo, which will be held in Washington, D.C., at the Pepco Edison Place Gallery.
Ajit Pai, the chairman of the FCC, and Maureen Ohlhausen, the acting chairman of the FTC, will reportedly offer brief remarks.
The expo is part of a two-part campaign from the FTC and FCC to shine a spotlight on robocalls and what the agencies are doing to stop them. They co-hosted a policy forum last month on the topic.
Debt collectors have been warring with telecom companies for years over call-blocking technology, which, in some cases, gives individuals the opportunity to label calls as spam or robocalls and have them blocked. Many of those blocked calls are legitimate collection calls that either the individuals do not want to receive or want to make it harder to be connected.
The FCC has undertaken a number of steps, including issuing a proposed rule that seeks to protect consumers from scammers using caller ID spoofing technology and from receiving robocalls.