Sunday, March 29, 2026

FCC Proposes Forcing Call Center Onshoring, AI Firms Love It

You actually think companies are going to pay Americans to take customer service calls in the AI age?

Posted by LampLighter at 11:31 AM | 3 COMMENTS | permalink

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what's actually happening: Carr is helping telecoms sell a massive wave of AI layoffs in customer service by selling it as some noble patriotic onshoring of important jobs (with light notes of racism) notice how Reuters doesn't even mention AI, and parrots Carr's logic completely unskeptically

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-- Karl Bode (@karlbode.com) Mar 10, 2026 at 10:44 AM

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More from the article ...

... Uncle Sam is trying to make American call centers great again. The question is whether they will be great because they're filled with local workers or whether this will provide yet another excuse for companies to turn customer service jobs over to AI.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted unanimously (or as unanimously as a body missing two of its five members can decide) Thursday to proceed with drafting rules that would require companies under its purview to begin onshoring customer service call center operations -- at least to a degree.

"We propose to limit the percentage of customer service calls that providers may make from or answer at foreign call centers to a specified percentage," the Commission wrote in the draft [PDF] notice of proposed rulemaking (the voted-on version has not been published as of writing). "We believe that such a cap would encourage movement of call center operations back to the U.S." ...


#1 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-03-27 10:50 PM

OK, in my experience...

When I call Comcast (a.k.a. Xfinity) for assistance, I am greeted by an AI robot that does not seem to have a clue about what I am asking help for.

That AI robot seems to be programmed for two things:

1) preventing me from talking with a human who can understand my problem

- and -

2) up-selling (i.e., trying to get me to spend more money with Comcast), not solving my current problem.

#2 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-03-27 10:57 PM

I've experienced

1) Call Center based in a southern state - super helpful, and I could actually understand them

2) Foreign call center - generally talk to someone named "Jake" with an accent that makes them hard to understand and I'm sure it's the same for them given the quality of the outcomes

3) AI Call center - mixed... There are the actual AI ones that emulate a person scarily well, and for basic issues work ok. Then there are the ones like Lamp described for Comcast that make me want to slam the phone down like I had an old school phone receiver in my hand.

If onshoring call centers resulted in a mix of the good AI from 3 with escalations to the people in 1.... I'm all for it. I'd happily never speak to "Jake" again.

#3 | Posted by kwrx25 at 2026-03-30 12:05 PM

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