US phone carriers may soon be able to block all calls from robocallers' carriers

You may have wondered why phone companies haven't already been blocking calls coming from known bad actors. The reason is that they weren't legally allowed to block calls until they met certain criteria. (I believe this is part of what gives them common carrier status.) That criteria will be expanded, soon:

Under the change, the FCC said carriers can block calls "from bad-actor upstream voice service providers that pass illegal or unwanted calls along to other providers, when those upstream providers have been notified but fail to take action to stop these calls." Carriers that impose this type of blocking will get a safe harbor from liability "for the unintended or inadvertent blocking of wanted calls, thus eliminating a concern that kept some companies from implementing robust robocall blocking efforts."