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> Is there a compelling reason to allow such spoofs?

It makes telcos money. That's reason enough, since there are no economic downsides to the network operators that enable these crimes. If companies like AT&T and Verizon were also being subject to this $120M fine, we might see them decide to make caller ID trustworthy so that it could be used to block robocalls.

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>"It makes telcos money."

How?

Telcos charge for connecting phone calls and routing voice packets. Even robocallers have to pay those fees.

Not only that, but they also charge for Caller ID name lookups.

This is interesting. So if I get a strange number and search 800notes.com or whatever the carrier is getting paid?

No, this occurs at the telco level. When a call is placed, only the number is sent. The receiving exchange must look up that number to get the name, and that lookup costs some fraction of a cent. This is why Caller ID with name costs extra money.

So if I don't answer, who is paying for the call? I thought unanswered calls were free for some reason.

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