Wish I could recall the podcast I listened to a few years ago that was telling the history of robo-dialers and caller ID spoofing. The general gist was that AT&T was making money off it from 1-900 operators so they weren't eager to self-regulate. So even though ending spam calling is a bipartisan issue, feet were dragged on the implementation.

If anyone's eager to do podcast archaeology, IIRC one of the angles was investigating dead government agency phone numbers, and some lady entrepreneur in the 80s. Might have been Reply All, but the market regulation angle makes me think Planet Money.

of course, politicians exempt themselves from the spam call category. Political speech is the most important speech!

https://archive.org/details/3f25eeb8affc11e6892a43edc8087050

~~I _think_ this is the one.~~

God I miss this podcast.

Edit: this IS the one.

Are you familiar with the Search Engine podcast?

I am. I couldn't get into it. I'll give it another shot. Maybe I didn't try long enough.