> I thought this was supposed to happen 5 years ago. Did they just chicken out on the prospect of actually shutting down telcos sending spam volume?

It would certainly hurt a consumption-based economy, for starters.

Why would that hurt a consumption-based economy?

Telcos make money off of scammer activity.

Maybe in the same way that Office Depot makes money on the envelopes used in mail fraud

It's a vector for advertising.

But that's not a consumer initiative. Advertising can come from all sorts of places that the consumer doesn't like, and in economies where advanced levels of consumer choice are limited to the state bureaucrats.