“How much longer are we going to tolerate people’s lives being destroyed when they fall for an imposter call that looks like it’s coming from their bank or the IRS? This is inexcusable, it has to stop, and phone company compliance will make a big difference,” said Katie Craig of the North Carolina Public Interest Research Group (NCPIRG). “Phone companies have known about this deadline for five years. The FCC told companies to do this three years ago and Congress passed a law mandating it nearly two years ago.”

The NCPIRG Education Fund has published a new report, Make the Ringing Stop: The FCC is Finally Fighting Back Against Robocalls. It finds, overall, among 3,063 telecommunications providers who reported their status to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as of this month and who the FCC did not exempt from submitting information:

17 percent said they’d completely implemented anti-robocall technology

27 percent had partially implemented the technology.

56 percent said they were not using the industry standard technology but rather are using their own methods to manage robocalls.

“Here we are with more than 80 percent of phone companies not doing all they can to stop robocalls. These unwanted calls terrorize all of us and victimize many of us,” said Craig. “As if the $10 billion a year in fraud losses from illegal robocalls isn’t bad enough, they cost us Americans another $3 billion a year in wasted time.”

While robocalls have declined slightly this summer, regulators need to move up the deadline for smaller companies, who have until June 2023 to upgrade their technology. The attorneys general in all 50 states are calling for this as well because illegal robocallers are flocking to phone companies with weak robocall detection.

North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein has been a vocal advocate for this issue as well.

“Fighting back against robocalls is one of my top priorities. Along with 50 other attorneys general, I negotiated the Anti-Robocall Principles with the phone companies to push them to do more to block robocalls and help us go after telemarketers who are breaking the law. I also led a coalition of 51 attorneys general to urge the FCC to move up the deadline for smaller companies to join larger companies in implementing caller ID technology to combat spoofed robocalls,” said Stein.

NCPIRG Education Fund also looked closer at 49 of the largest mobile and home phone companies in the United States (those that can serve 1 million or more). Only 16 of them have told the FCC that they have completely implemented anti-robocall technology. An additional 18 have partially implemented the technology. The remaining 15 companies have told the FCC they haven’t adopted the industry standard technology at all and they’re using their own methods to reduce robocalls, or they have not reported their status to the FCC’s database, as required by law.

“I’m grateful for NCPIRG’s work to fight robocalls, and I’ll continue doing everything in my power to reduce these calls and restore some of our peace of mind,” said Stein.