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We have that here too. Usually when you sign up your spam calls actually increase because spammers use the list of "banned numbers" as a list of "verified numbers of real humans".

With CallID spoofing its so hard to track down that violators never get enforced.

In India you have the advantage that the caller pays, which means you have a phone system that somewhat securely verifies who the caller is so they can be billed. In the US the receiver pays so there is no system in place to verify who the caller is.

> Usually when you sign up your spam calls actually increase because spammers use the list

Why is that information public? Shouldn't only the "middleware" equivalent be aware of who has signed up?

> In the US the receiver pays so there is no system in place to verify who the caller is.

What?! Why?!

> In the US the receiver pays so there is no system in place to verify who the caller is.

What? That's bonkers. Why on earth should the receiver pay?

This is the root cause of North America's broken telephony system. $30/month buys you a landline with unlimited outbound calls to both landlines and mobile phones. The system has no facility to meter outbound calls from a landline.

I almost forgot about this rule, the receiver and the caller both pay for calls.

Well, no one pays for a 'call'- generally in the US inbound/outbound calls are unlimited on a landline and lately on cell lines as well as minutes restrictions have dissipated. Growing up in the US you only had to worry about long distance or 'local long distance,' which, ironically, was often more expensive than regular long distance.

still bonkers until proven otherwise

Plus, if the call comes from overseas they're not going to respect the DND from your country unless the fake caller is also from your country of origin.

I can't say definitively but the vast majority of my spam calls are from South Asia or South East Asia (I'd guess Philistines based on accent). They typically don't respect the Australian Do Not Call register so much.

My Indian friends complain that despite being on the DND list, the unsolicited commercial message situation in India is pretty bad, due to the lack of data protection laws.

> do people not use multiple phone numbers in USA?

The e-SIM is the easiest way to get two numbers on the same iPhone. Having multi-SIM phones isn’t popular for a number of reasons, including the fact that Americans and Europeans can get a 2nd number via services like Skype and Vonage anytime they want — something India still prohibits.

Incidentally I wrote about having multiple SIMs in India a week ago[1]… they’re an interesting historical accident, and the well-to-do in India will continue to use them, but they’ll become increasingly less common as telcos raise prices.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30770786

Same here in Norway. It is an offence to make an unsolicited commercial call to a number that has been on the register for more than a month. It can cost the caller 300 USD per call in fines.

I have had perhaps two unsolicited calls in the last five years and one of those was from a number apparently in London, UK.

Most of the scam calls and texts these days come from outside of the US, and unfortunately India is a huge source of those calls - wages are low and English language proficiency is high. And it's not just the US that has this problem. Here in Norway a common scam telemarketing call are "investment opportunities" that show up as coming from a UK number, and if you answer, it's very clear that the person is calling from a call center in India.

If it makes you feel any better, Indians also get spam calls from other Indians.

We hate it as much as you do.

Oh, I have no doubt, and to be clear, I'm not blaming India as a whole. I don't think India has a higher percentage of the population willing to try and scam other people, but given the number of people in the country, the economic situation, and the level of English language proficiency makes it a very attractive location to set up shop. It's also much harder for law enforcement to do much about the problem when the calls are coming from overseas.

>Maybe something similar — something that allows people to opt out of such calls/messages — can be implemented in USA.

Why not opt in instead?

> do people not use multiple phone numbers in USA?

Not really, no. Dual SIMs are kind of a niche feature here, and most users I've heard of do it with a US SIM plus one for some other country they travel to frequently.

Curiosity: what are the use cases for two SIMs from the same country?

Owing to its unpopularity, or to which its unpopularity owes, Apple has only supported dual SIM for a few generations.

> Curiosity: what are the use cases for two SIMs from the same country?

I have one line on Verizon and one on T-Mobile for better coverage, robustness to congestion.

iOS 13 has a "cellular data switching" feature for dual SIM that automatically chooses networks based on availability.

Data from one network even provides "WiFi calling" capability for the other line.

> I have one line on Verizon and one on T-Mobile for better coverage, robustness to congestion.

For cost & complexity reasons, this is a very niche need.

Complexity is virtually zero. The most non-technical of person could set it up. Cost however is a valid point, but like OP I rationalize the cost.

> Curiosity: what are the use cases for two SIMs from the same country?

I don't know the exact reason, but here are some thoughts on that:

Hypothesis 1:

In India, only the caller pays for the call. The callee pays nothing. I say this because I was surprised to learn that in USA, the callee pays.

Long long ago — before calling via the internet through WhatsApp, Signal etc became a thing — in India if you (or rather, your SIM card) travel to another state within India (say from Kerala to Karnataka), your phone goes into a "roaming" mode.

When you're in roaming (when your SIM is in a different state from where it was originally registered), both the caller AND the callee would have to pay.

So, if you're from one state and you intend to live in another for a condsiderable amount of time (perhaps because you got a job in another state), then it makes sense to sign up for a new phone number in that new state so that you wouldn't be charged when you get calls from family and friends from your home state.

However, this reason is no longer valid because in order to stay competitive phone companies stopped charging you for incoming calls if you go to another state within India.

Hypothesis 2:

Business people tend to have multiple phone numbers to handle the high volume of calls they receive, or to separate work and personal calls.

Hypothesis 3 (my reason):

I initially had a number that I used for personal calls.

Later, a new provider came on the scene with better rates, faster internet, better clarity etc, and I signed up for that as well because why not. This was before phone number portability was introduced.

My mobile data and work calls is through one provider, my WhatsApp is signed up via the other number, and most friends also call me via this other one.

And in some places only one of the provider has a proper strong cell coverage.

It's technically possible to merge that all into one number, but I haven't bothered.

Also, calling directly via phone (as opposed to via the internet) is still very common here because it's super cheap. For example, calls from Jio to another Jio number is free I think.

> In India, only the caller pays for the call. The callee pays nothing. I say this because I was surprised to learn that in USA, the callee pays.

This was killing telcos like Airtel and Vi until they too adopted Jio’s model: every SIM has a nontrivial monthly charge whether you make calls with it or not. And that price has risen substantially in the last few years and will continue to rise.

It won’t stop affluent Indians but people on more near-median incomes will find keeping extra SIMs unaffordable.

>in USA, the callee pays.

Except in certain circumstances, I don't think this is true.

First, most calls are free now. You might have a number of minutes, but both the caller and callee have to pay for minutes at the same time. But most plans are unlimited calling within the USA now, I believe.

When calling other countries, the caller pays. Receiving a call from another country doesn't cost anything.

"Collect calls" are calls where the callee pays the long-distance charges. This is unrelated to the "minutes" above. There are no long-distance charges within the USA that I know of, but international charges will apply to the caller unless they "call collect" and then it would be the callee. The callee has to approve it, though.

Most 1-800 (and 1-888 IIRC) numbers automatically charge the callee instead of the caller. This is an agreement that the callee has with the phone provider.

1-900 numbers (and certain 1-800 numbers, for some reason) charge the caller. These are another agreement with the phone provider by the callee, and they're supposed to get consent from the caller before charging, but there are many scams here.

Because of the lack of long distance charges inside the USA, 1-800 numbers aren't as common as they used to be. For a while, almost any business that had wide-ranging customers had one. Now, it seems like only mega-corps still have them.

All that said, I vaguely remember someone saying that they had 2 sim cards because they had 2 plans. IIRC, they got better long distance rates on one or the other, and used them appropriately. That was a while back, though, and I could be remembering it completely wrong.

First of all, thank you for taking the time to explain the whole thing.

> >in USA, the callee pays.

> Except in certain circumstances, I don't think this is true.

Oh okay, so the caller pays and the callee does not pay under normal circumstances? Now I'm confused. When I said the callee pays in USA, I was working off of information from another comment[1] by jedberg in another branch on this thread. I'm pasting that comment below for convenience:

> In India you have the advantage that the caller pays, which means you have a phone system that somewhat securely verifies who the caller is so they can be billed. In the US the receiver pays so there is no system in place to verify who the caller is.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30839453

Under my plan, I pay a flat rate for all calls inside the USA, in or out. In addition, I pay per GB for data.

If I want to call any other country, I have to pay a certain amount per minute. If someone from another country calls me, they pay.

I outlined the exceptions to that above, but I haven't actually experienced those exceptions for quite a few years now.

The big reason they were popular in India was that one had to pay for long-distance calls (yes, even on mobile) if you called interstate (or more accurately, inter-telecom “circle”), and many people had lives that spanned two or more circles.

The other crucial reason is that it was near-free to have as many prepaid SIMs as you wanted, you paid only if you used it to make calls (receive was, and remains, free, like in Europe). And VoIP numbers aren’t allowed in India.

These days, all the carriers have national licenses, there’s no long-distance charges, and you have to pay a nontrivial sum (nontrivial unless you’re a relatively rich Indian) every month to keep your SIM active. Whether you make calls with it or not.

This has been a slow, “boil the frog” change, and the relatively extremely well-off Indians on HN will probably be the last to notice, but the need to have multiple SIMs in India isn’t as strong as it was in the 2000s.

> Curiosity: what are the use cases for two SIMs from the same country?

Having SIMs from different carriers to take advantage of different rates. This is mostly in countries where call prices are unregulated and calling someone using a competitor carrier can be a surprise that costs sometimes 10x more.

This is more common in poorer countries.

I had it a while for a work and a personal phone number. Also when someone was sick and I took her phone calls. There are probably ways to reroute the phone calls, but this was quick, easy, and I can do it on my own without involving the phone company (any bigco tends to mess up anything you ask)

> Curiosity: what are the use cases for two SIMs from the same country?

One phone number, registered to your business, that you never give to anyone other than 2FA, contact number for bank accounts, credit card confirmation etc. And one phone number that you use for business and personal calls.

I still get spam calls on phone #1, of course, but it protects me against SIM swap attacks from people who get access to the second phone number

Separation of private mobile 24/7 and office mobile during office hours. Office mobile is also abandoned when you switch jobs, so can we freely shared because the responsibilities won't follow you

I have two phones. Personal and work. The work one has all the MDM, email, and work profile/apps.

Perhaps all of us in North America should sign up for the Indian DND list since that's where the majority of our spam calls originate! I signed up for the Canadian "do not call" lists when it came into effect and it only served to increase the spam calls/texts I receive.

It's extreme but changing to a Qc number will prevent most spam calls