Ajit Pai, Chair of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) loves his Dunkin! (For those of you not from New England, Dunkin is local coffee brand favorite.)
And he also sees a lot of similarities between robocalls and the New England Patriots! Huh?
Seriously, these were teasers in Pai’s recent remarks at the Robocall Symposium of the New England States, held in the Boston area in late November. Pai shared with the audience the FCC’s efforts to date in combating the robocall scourge, and called for adopting “The Patriot Way,” that is working as one team, to address the problem.
According to Pai, there were 5.7 billion robocalls in the month of October alone, approximately 2115 calls every second. Further, almost half of these calls, about 2.65 billion, were scams encompassing healthcare, Social Security, student loan payments and product warranty claims. And this is on top of the over 671 million telemarketing calls during the same period.
Pai pointed to the FCC’s recent efforts to allow phone companies to establish call blocking services as a default setting for consumers, as well as its promotion of better caller ID authentication through its SHAKEN/STIR caller ID authentication framework. Pai also applauded recent bi-partisan efforts in Congress on anti-robocall legislation, including the TRACED Act and the STOP Robocalls Act.
Bringing it back to football, Pai concluded his remarks by noting that the Patriots’ success is due in no small part to its strong team ethics, and their willingness to place personal agendas aside. “To make a meaningful difference against robocalls,” Pai said, “everyone needs to do his or her part.”
Read the text of Pai’s remarks at the Robocall Symposium of the New England States.
