International scam calls may present a challenge because foreign operators’ equipment won’t be as helpful in labeling calls as legitimate or not, said Alex Quilici, chief executive officer of YouMail.
“A lot of international calls, it’s going to be difficult to tell -- is this spam, or a scam, or is it real?” he said.
Verizon Communications Inc. in a statement called the FCC vote “welcome news.”
“We intend to take advantage of the new flexibility the FCC is giving us,” Verizon Executive Vice President Ronan Dunne said in the statement.
Business groups cautioned that the call blocking may not distinguish illegal telemarketing and scams from legitimate calls placed once they have consent from a subscriber.
The ruling could block legitimate businesses, including credit unions, from contacting their members, the National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions said.
“In the event of fraud or a data breach, consumers could be left in the dark for days,” Carrie Hunt, executive vice president with the credit union group, said in an emailed statement.
Phone companies may be reluctant to put in place aggressive call-blocking for fear of interfering with needed or wanted calls, said YouMail’s Quilici. He raised the example of an improperly blocked call from a pharmacy.
“Grandma doesn’t get her prescription and something bad happens to her -- that’s catastrophic,” Quilici said.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.