Why is Whitelisting Absent from Telephones?

The telephone has come a long way since its introduction in the late 1800’s. Throughout the years since its birth, the telephone has seen countless technological advances, leading up to the iPhone, arguably the most advanced telephone available today. Surely Alexander Graham Bell never conceived such a device would ever exist. But along with all these advancements, there is one striking feature eerily absent from the majority of telephones in service worldwide – whitelisting?

It is pretty amazing where the telephone has come over the course of the 100+ years since the first telephone materialized. No longer is it necessary to hand-crank a telephone to charge it before use. Nor it is required to speak to an operator to be connected with the person whom you wish to speak. The rotary dial is long gone, having been replaced by tone dialing using the numbered buttons we are accustomed to today. Cordless phones reign supreme, removing a physical presence limitation during conversations. Take that one step further to mobile phones, and now you can talk just about anywhere imaginable.

However, with all that technology, the telephone system itself is still somewhat stagnant, stuck in the dark ages, a relic of years past. No revolutionary features have been introduced to improve telephone use. I wonder why we are not seeing new telephone features offered based on the innumerable lessons learned through Internet email use.

One vital feature absent from telephones is the ability to whitelist numbers in the same vein email addresses and domains can be whitelisted. There are some somewhat more advanced telephone units offering this capability, however whitelisting should be viewed a fundamental feature of a telephone. No matter the handset, I should be able start blocking every phone call by default and only allow a ring to be initiated by the numbers I personally whitelist.

Ideally, this feature would be a service offered by the phone company as part of your de facto monthly telephone fee. There could be a web site, or a phone system, which allows for the administration of your whitelist, similar to how most banks allow access to your account from both the web and a telephone. I envision being able to export my Google Contacts address book, importing that in to the web-based administration module and suddenly, everyone I call is capable of reaching me with relative ease.

Why is this not possible in this day and age?

One of the problems this would solve is the whole “do not call list” issue. There would be no need for a “do not call list” any longer – simply whitelist to stop those annoying telemarketers from calling you when you least desire!

Since cell phones are widely in use, the odd emergency call you may receive from a friend or relative in need should be a non-issue – if they are in your address book, and you imported your address book in to the whitelist, then you will get the calls you desire. Back in the day (love that phrase, don’t you – makes me feel old!) when pay phones were all the rage I could see whitelisting being problematic. With just about everyone on the planet owning a cell phone I see whitelisting less of an issue than it would have previously been.

A little background on what prompted me to write this article. As our About page says, both Rich and I live, work and dream up wacky Miso Soup combination in Tokyo, Japan. I have an American telephone number so it is “easy” for my family to get in touch with me. The unfortunate side affect of owning a California number in Japan is that at 4am (read: the middle of the night), when it’s 12pm Cali time, we get the idiotic automated telemarketer phone calls.

If we could whitelist phone numbers like we can whitelist email then this would never happen! A nice side affect of whitelisting is that kids can no longer crank call people. ;-)

So what do you think – stupid or smart idea? Would you use a phone number whitelisting feature?