As the regulators try to curb the menace of unwanted calls, telcos are appealing that their unsolicited calls should be allowed. Masking it under “service-related communications”, some of them have asked for not just upselling, but even calls to past and prospective customers — in my view, this is no different than any other party making unsolicited sales calls.

I have long wanted a service that will let me block out such calls, and perhaps provide an easy way for users to generate a collaborative spam list of telephone numbers. So everytime I get an unwanted sales call, I should be able to press the * key and that records my vote that this caller is a spammer. I should then be able to set criteria to block out spammers from calling me. I think I would pay $5-10/year for this service. Not sure if something like this can be done without operator support (could be handset resident)?

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