AT&T CEO interrupted by a robocall during a live interview

[orev]

This honestly feels staged. I have never seen anyone in any interview receive a call and pull out their phone to see who was calling. So in this ONE case, someone was calling and he had to take out his phone? I imagine CEOs are getting called constantly, even when they are in interviews. How come they never pull out the phone for other calls? Do they just use airplane mode? If so, then why wasn’t it enabled for this interview?

Just like most of what AT&T does, this is a lie. To what end I’m not sure. To show everyone their incompetence in dealing with the problem? To try to put pressure on the FCC to make some rules (that AT&T will fight against because it hates regulation)? Or maybe they’re just trying to poke fun at the problem.

Edit: OK, so this was on CSPAN, not an actual TV interview. It does seem more natural than something that is clearly staged, so now I have my doubts.

[mtmail]

> So in this ONE case, someone was calling and he had to take out his phone?

Watch the 19 second video. He didn't take out his phone, it was a notification on his smartwatch.

[idDriven]

My guess is this is leading up to a PR campaign where the industry will make a big deal about how seriously they are tackling the 'newly discovered' issue as an attempt to undercut a push for actual governmental oversight and regulation.

[tialaramex]

>I have never seen anyone in any interview receive a call

That's nice, but so what?

For comparison, actual famous people have been interrupted by telephone calls during the taped (before an audience) panel news/comedy show "Have I Got News For You?" all the time. Real people. Real telephone calls. It happens because a certain type of person when you say "Make sure your phone is off" does not in fact make sure their phone is off, why should they, it's fine, right? And then it rings. Embarrassing.

I assume in most cases they just edit it out of the show but if the reaction is especially amusing or they refer back to it in later parts of the show it's easier to leave it in. Because it's a show with actual famous people rather than "real" people there's not really an option to e.g. take their phone away. Who would agree to that if they're famous? "Are you claiming I'm too stupid to turn it off?" Oops.

And no, what happens isn't that people like CEOs are constantly in phone calls. They have someone in the middle, a Personal Assistant, paid to take those calls without wasting their time on frivolities. "Hello, Mr Person's office? No I'm afraid he's busy right now, what did you want to talk to him about?". He may or may not be busy, it's just easier to always say that.

Every person they give their number to is another person who might waste their time, so most people get the PA's number.

[dragonwriter]

> OK, so this was on CSPAN, not an actual TV interview

CSPAN is actual TV.

[dfgert]

I feel like this for most sensational news stories that I hear on news. Too much agenda in every news pisses me off. I wish there was a way to filter out such agenda.

[drugme]

I have never seen X happen.

I doesn't happen very often -- but it does happen.

[rhacker]

I didn't do this but it has crossed my mind... The fastest way to end robocalls forever:

Sign up every damn congressional seat's phone number to ever scammy health insurance, hotel timeshare and PC help desk website's contact me form.

[lamp_book]

I've been getting spam emails from MidwayUSA, a online gun retailer, despite that I never visited their website, or anything related to guns, and their unsubscribe process is completely non-functional. I was forwarding their emails to the FTC spam address, but eventually took the liberty to create a midway account for them and subscribing to their "eblast lists" (their own words). So far it hasn't accomplished anything.

[p1esk]

Do you have a list of their personal cell phone numbers?

[calgoo]

I think John Oliver did something like this with the FCC representatives, robocalling them every few minutes[1].

[1] https://www.newsweek.com/robocall-john-oliver-last-week-toni...

[x0x0]

I assume you're aware, but it's known that companies give white-glove treatment to all congresspeople and their family and their friends.

From robocalls to health insurance to the credit reporting agencies to comcast, these folks encounter none of the problems regular folks hit.

[tomc1985]

Regarding caller ID spoofing part of these robocalls... I would think the telco knows the number of each connected phone line, why can't they overwrite whatever number the caller supplies?

[toast0]

Historically, spoofing came from people with Primary Rate Interfaces (PRI, aka calling over T1), where you got to set the outgoing caller id because you might be running inbound calling separate from outbound calling, and you were presumed to know what you're doing.

In the last 20 years, give or take, the spoofing comes from VoIP carriers that are interconnected to the traditional telcos where you're receiving the calls. Your carrier has no idea which customer of the other carrier is making the call, only what the other carrier told them. The other carrier may also be passing through calls from another carrier -- there's a lot of traffic mixing going on.

[nitrogen]

A "phone line" is kind of an outdated concept. Even traditional call centers had many numbers carried as digital data over something like a T1 line, and nowadays how do you connect a "line" to a call center running VoIP over a business-grade cable modem connection? The "line" is just metadata, like caller ID.

[downrightmike]

Ideally there would be a ANI number, which should be the originating number. Which is used to know who to bill as the call goes from telco to telco. Most phones don't use this, it isn't required and can also be spoofed. Then there is the CSID which is what shows up on your caller ID and that can be set to whatever we want. What we really need is to force ANI because that is transmitted before the first ring and the CSID is after the second ring. But hardly anyone wants to have a ANI set, especially the spammers.

[munk-a]

What if a call is originating from AT&T and going to a Verizon number, AT&T could mark the number as "tots legit" and then Verizon would be unable to tell if AT&T was lying or not, in fact if one company started clamping down then another company might start openly acting as a haven for these sorts of calls and making a lot more money by being the only option to look legit... Finally, if these calls are originating overseas you might have to go through the chinese government to actually try and force a bad acting telco to start cracking down, that sort of pressure would take the US government - while tech companies have some pull overseas a lot of the local service companies (including probably AT&T) have nothing to pressure the chinese government with.

[MiddleEndian]

They could pass you the originator information and refuse to complete calls from networks that don't give them that information. But they won't because that's less money for them

[bluGill]

They don't know. the phone system was designed on a trust the caller to not lie system...

[dfee]

Link to the video: https://mobile.twitter.com/cspan/status/1108422307008184326

[argd678]

I use google voice to screen my calls, if there was a way on iOS to disable calls not via Google Voice on my phone that would probably solve the robo call problem for me.

[azhenley]

Context on the recent media coverage of robocalls:

"I Get a Robocall While Making a Video About Robocalls" by Vlogbrothers: https://youtu.be/mNIgh3JMDcQ

"Robocalls" by Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: https://youtu.be/FO0iG_P0P6M

[monster2control]

HA HA HA HA

[xstephen95x]

PR stunt

[lucb1e]

True or not, the comment is rather unsubstantiated with just two words.