I don't know why people don't get spam calls in Germany, but it's not because of regulation. The U.S. has similiar regulation, and in fact individual consumers can sue telemarketers for $500-$1000 per call.
The problem is that the callers disguise their identity and in most cases are overseas beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement.
The telcos are working on solving the problem. The FCC recently changed a rule[1] that was, in part, preventing them from acting. The telcos are also working out the technology that will allow them to block them at the source, and all the major ones are planning to roll it out soon. It's not as if they've been intentionally negligent here.
The telcos are part of the problem. I work for a company that deals with incoming robocalls -- thousands a day. I have a very long email conversation in my inbox between us (company) and Verizon. The general theme in this conversation thread is
COMPANY: we're getting thousands of these robocalls into our various numbers, will you please help to stop it?
VERIZON: We don't see a problem, everything is fine. Your bill will be there soon.
COMPANY: attached is a log showing 4,000 calls in the last two hours sent through your network and terminating at our location. Will you please help to stop it?
VERIZON: we have investigated the provided calls and we see nothing showing these calls originated from us. Please contact the upstream telco and ask them. Your bill should have arrived by now, pay it.
COMPANY: but Verizon does not provide us with information on the upstream telcos, we need your assistance in stopping the robocallers. This bill is considerably larger than usual because of all these robocalls. Will you please help up stop them?
VERIZON: we recommend your legal team contact our legal team if you feel we are actually allowing robocalls to pass through our network to yours. Pay your bill immediately.
Recently, there as been a lot of calls where older people got called by a fake police detective. The display reads "110" (which is the emergency number for the police in germany). So, if there are countermeasures, they are not effective.
Well, normally they use the call to get to know if the older people have something of value in their house. They usually tell stories that there has been a heap of crimes lately in the area, and that they'd like to help the people to secure valuable stuff.
If they have, they'll show up after some time, and collect it, to store it safe in the "police department" (which they don't, of cours). Or they'll show up as two, and one will pretend to do some questioning, while the second walks around the house and searches the rooms to find something of value.
That's at least how's written in the newspapers. So yes, it's a scam that is far more targeted, and not that easy to do - because you have to be physically in the area. Or you need straw men.
You can watch Kitboga on YouTube. He calls these centers and walks through the whole scam. Basically they use fear of an arrest to get the target to buy gift cards. It sounds dumb but it works on vulnerable members of society.
I live in Germany and got multiple spam calls in a relatively small time frame (days) from spoofed numbers. I am pretty sure this is not allowed and might be fined too if caught. But i also know for sure there is not much telcos do against this if you are already in a position to route calls, probably for technical reasons. That said this was the only occasion i got those calls that i can sharply remember and it happened some years ago already.
The issue is that the callers speak English, not German. If you go to Nordic countries where everyone speaks English you get similar calls as in the US.
Could it be that it's because the calls would need to come from outside the country(probably outside the EU) and there is disproportionately more English speaking people outside Germany?
It's a problem similar to why there are more viruses for Windows, well, it's why there's more Windows machines in the world.
How is it not because of regulation? Robocalls are illegal in Germany and there are very high fines. That seems exactly what regulation is supposed to do and I never got a single random robocall. I got a few calls from my ISP for marketing reasons but after telling them not to call me they added me to the list and I haven't heard from them since. I probably allowed to call me when I signed up.
It’s just not worth the trouble for foreign criminals to develop German language capabilities.
German regulation does exactly nothing to prevent foreign criminals from spamming Germans with robocalls from foreign numbers, Germans just aren’t an attractive target.
The problem is that the callers disguise their identity and in most cases are overseas beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement.