Here in France, the government broke up and privatised the France Telecom (aka Orange SA) monopoly a few years ago, and one of the side effects was that they stopped dealing aggressively with phone and SMS spam. Yet the French government remains one of the largest investors in the rebadged Orange. So now it’s not as bad here as it is in the US, but it’s definitely a problem. Moreso on mobile than on landlines/VOIP. I’ve heard that other mobile vendors are even worse. Most people use apps or some kind of management schemes to mitigate the problem.
It was much less of a problem when we lived in Belgium. I don’t know if that’s because they did a better job or the problem is much worse now.
