The FCC wants to legally force telecoms to collect new and renewing customers’ government issued identity number and physical address, impacting everyone from the privacy-conscious to domestic abuse survivors. “We never thought that would happen here.”
In the US at least they’ve been implementing STIR/SHAKEN since about 2020. You can typically see the result of this on your cell phone. Incoming calls should have a little checkmark next to them meaning they’re a verified caller. It’s similar to SSL certs for domain names but for callers instead. (Shady crap for the root CAs but that’s a different issue…cause America).
This isn’t a perfect system as parts of the world that call into the US don’t have VoIP equipment but the FCC has other guidelines on top of STIR/SHAKEN. They are actively trying to mitigate spam but it takes awhile to revamp something as old as the worlds phone system.