FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021 [pdf]

I work with phone systems. It's usually determined by how long they hear a continuous sound at the start of a call. If it's relatively short (and it can be adjusted by settings), it assumes it's a live voice (like someone saying "Hello?" is usually pretty short). If it's continuous for a certain period of time, it assumes it's a voicemail.

For our speech applications we have different behaviors depending on which call disposition is detected (that's the term for this, also determines things like invalid phone numbers).

Sometimes when testing speech applications I'll pick up and scratch the receiver continuously or speak without taking a pause until the voicemail disposition is triggered so I can test a voicemail message without having to check voicemail.

We make these calls on behalf of health insurance companies for health reminders and surveys, so our calls are more legitimate than most, but we do use an autodialer to reduce the load on our live agents.

...But it will equal-and-oppositely create a market, perhaps a black market, for anonymous voice calls on the other... Perhaps these would be delivered by an open source Voice-over-IP program which uses an anonymizing P2P network as its backbone...

Also... will it make any difference for phone calls that originate outside of our country?

Now, those small observations aside, I think that hard authentication of the source of phone calls, is a great idea to help combat scammers and robocalls... I'd use this service myself, and I know other people that would be immensely benefitted from it...

In 2005, the FCC decided that ISPs should be regulated by them. From 2005 - 2012, Congress failed to pass new bills granting the FCC this authority. It was denied by congress. In 2015, the FCC decided that they didn't congress to grant that authority.

So yeah, the FCC website claiming they have an authority is not an impartial source. Two years later, the FCC reverted back to the Title I classification.

So for 2 years, the FCC claimed a power that they were not authorized to claim.

If Congress wants the FCC to have this power they can easily pass a bill granting them that authority, they have repeatedly failed to do so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_S...

Wheeler was born on April 5, 1946 in Redlands, California. He attended Ohio State University.[7] From 1969 to 1976, Wheeler led the trade group Grocery Manufacturers of America.[8] He then went on to work at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association from 1976 to 1984, becoming president of the trade group in 1979. For a year until its closure, Wheeler was president of NABU Network, before spending a number of years creating or running several different technology startups. In 1992, he became the CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, a post he held until 2004.