US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai proposed extending the scope of spam call protections to cover those originating from outside the country, while also planning to add rules covering unsolicited SMS into the mix.

If adopted, the proposal would expand a law applied to domestic calls prohibiting caller ID information being falsified to defraud consumers, a move Pai believes would enable US agencies to “pursue international scammers”.

His proposal will be voted on by commissioners on 1 August.

The move is the latest step in the FCC’s ongoing battle against a deluge of so-called robocalls faced by US consumers, following the passage of new regulations last month enabling operators to block such calls.

Anti-robocall app YouMail estimated US citizens received 4.7 billion robocalls in May, with nearly half of those coming from scammers. In the first half of 2019, the FCC said it received 35,000 complaints about such calls.