"Yea, so here is an app you will love! Install it, and it allows anyone, anywhere, anytime, to interrupt whatever you are doing on your device, background whatever app you are running, cause it to ring, buzz, and notify! Further, if you press the green button, it will allow that random person to start talking to you."
Even if it managed to get past either of the app stores' rules, who would install such an intrusive app?
Yet, every smartphone sold today has that exact annoying app pre-installed!
Also, what if you could set time and day for availability - i.e. for work related numbers.
A large weakness with existing communication systems (phone, e-mail, physical mail) is that its a pipe where anyone in the world can blast at you, often anonymously.
On top of that the telcos are joining in on the fun. I am an AT&T cell phone subscriber and in the last month they’ve started robo-calling me non-stop to sign up for their ailing DirecTV service. Who in their right mind would subscribe to that with all the better streaming options available? But the worst part is that they technically aren’t breaking the rules themselves because we do have an existing business relationship (if you can call paying my bill on time and doing everything in my power not to otherwise interact with them a relationship).
I recently got one of those, and I'm not an AT&T customer.
Oddly enough I remember DirecTV doing this ~20 years ago. It was the first time I was willing to pay for CallerID. DirecTV (or some representative that had that as their outgoing name) called me several hundred days in a row. I ended up making a game out of it, seeing how many times they’d call back if I never answered.
It's bizarre that AT&T would sabotage the usefulness of their own customers' telephone service, but this is a bizarre world.
Large swaths of the US can't get usable broadband. These people use satellite TV services. Of course that market is already developed so growth requires pestering the people with better choices available.