>The solution to this is to get a phone number from an area code that you don't live in.Getting a new number is not a realistic "solution" for many people because they've had their old cellphone # for decades and it's already deeply entrenched with all their relatives, friends, doctors' emergency contact numbers, airlines notifications, bank fraud alerts vis SMS, etc, etc.
E.g. Most of my friends & family have had the same wireless phone numbers for more than 20 years which they've deliberately kept even when changing carriers.
People still want to keep their familiar number; they just want the spam robocalls to stop. Yes, buying a new area code # (which btw costs ~$40 admin charge with AT&T) ... and then expending a lot of effort to "propagate" the new number to all your contacts and website profiles is not impossible but it's a burden many don't want to tackle.
Some celebrities manage spam by always having at least 2 different cell phones. So a high-profile Hollywood actor would have:
(1) personal phone for spouse & kids & the agent that brings in the money. This number is a closely guarded secret and never shared with anyone or websites' account profiles. This phone's ringer can be set to "silence unknown callers not in the contact list".
(2) separate "burner" phone for everybody else.
The (2) business phone # is changed out monthly because it inevitably leaks out with all the people that have it. But (1) personal phone is only changed if it was leaked by a insider employee at AT&T or TMobile. But again, it's another unrealistic "solution" for most because regular people don't want to buy and carry around 2 separate phones. Yes, some phones can use dual SIMs but only the expensive models ... and it also requires paying extra for 2 numbers on the monthly bill.
Hopefully, an eventual solution that combines:
- more effective FCC crackdowns and penalties
- SHAKEN/STIR anti-spoofing,
- intelligent spam filters at the wireless carrier level,
- better call management tools in iOS/Android
... would be a more sane approach than buying new phone numbers to escape the spam.