Tag: Robocalling

LIVE EVENT: Will STIR/SHAKEN solve the Illegal Robocall Problem?

TelcoBridges is hosting a LIVE EVENT: Will STIR/SHAKEN solve the Illegal Robocall Problem? on July 27, 2021 at 2:00 PM with Gerry Christensen from YouMail Inc.

Illegal robocalls continue to be a significant problem for consumers and businesses of all sizes. Despite the best efforts to implement STIR/SHAKEN, illegal spam calls persist, wasting time, clogging up phone lines, and in some cases, perpetrating phishing attacks. Join us as we discuss current best practices that businesses can use with existing SIP Trunks, IP-PBXs, and UCaaS services to mitigate illegal robocalls. Get back to being productive with AI-powered robocall mitigation.

In this session, we’ll:
– Discuss the state and role of STIR/SHAKEN
– Why Robocall Mitigation is Required
– PBX, IP-PBX, UCaaS and CCaaS Integration
– How to Get Started
– Save some time for live Q/A

Register today here!

Everyone Likes to Complain About Robocalls

Are they willing to do anything about it?

By Alan Percy, CMO @TelcoBridges

Every time I’m in a social setting and I get asked about what I do for a career, the subject of illegal robocalls always dominates the discussion.   “What are you doing to stop them?”

I clearly remember a series of meetings with service providers a few years back, pitching them on solutions to the illegal robocall problem that could be solved with session border controller software.   They could not care less about the problem.   As much as consumers complained to the FCC about the problem, there was little that service providers could or would do about the problem.  They were getting paid to transit the calls and had little motivation to fix the problem.  It was someone else’s problem.

All that changed with the TRACED Act of 2019.

The TRACED act included a number of new tools and mandates:

Caller ID Authentication requiring the implementation of STIR/SHAKEN – this forced originating service providers to attach an Identity Token to the header of the call, with origination traceback information and an Attestation field that indicated whether the call could be trusted.

Call Blocking – prior to the TRACED act, service providers had to pass all traffic, essentially preventing them from screening call and preventing illegal robocalls from being delivered to consumers.  The Act allowed service providers to block suspicious traffic and indemnified them from prosecution for failing to delivering what they felt was a suspicious call.

Scam Call Protection – required the FCC to explore means to prevent One Ring Scams and protect hospitals from illegal calls.

Enforcement – the Act increased penalties, extended statute of limitations and other tools to help find and charge those generating and passing known illegal robocalls.

The first big milestone of the TRACED Act is almost upon us.  Service providers in the US are required to file their Robocall Mitigation Plans with the FCC by June 30th 2021.   The penalty for not filing a plan is having their traffic blocked by other providers after September 28th, 2021.

So all of a sudden, service providers are interested in dealing with illegal robocalls.

We discussed this in more details during a Cloud Communications Alliance webinar titled “Robocall Mitigation Compliance”, explaining the details of filing and impact of not filing a plan.

View the recording here:

Robocall Mitigation for the Contact Center

By Alan Percy, CMO @TelcoBridges

The network manager for a large retail chain (who asked to remain anonymous), came to us with a problem.  His agents at an inbound call center were wasting time answering calls from illegal robocallers and it was costing him dearly.  He was looking for a means to reduce, if not eliminate, the robocalls altogether.  In this case, the contact center was responsible for taking product orders, so the agents valuable time was wasting fielding calls rather than facilitating purchase fulfillment. Continue reading Robocall Mitigation for the Contact Center

Can an SBC help stop Robocallers? FAQ #3 of 10

Here’s question #3 from our “Session Border Controllers – TOP 10 FAQ” webinar, the 10 most frequently asked questions about SBCs. This video asks and answers the question can an SBC help stop Robocallers?

Watch the full TOP 10 FAQ video here: https://youtu.be/f3JTrz0dcr8

SIPNOC 2018 – The Robocall Summit

By Alan Percy, TelcoBridges

The SIP Network Operators Conference meeting was held in Herndon, VA this last week, bringing together roughly 100 service providers, suppliers and government regulators.  This year’s conference allocated one entire day to dig deeper into the #1 issue in telecommunications – Illegal Robocalling.

The magnitude and urgency of solving the issue was reinforced by keynote presentations from both Eric Berger, CTO of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Ian Scott, Chairman and CEO at the Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).   Both presentation implored the service providers and their suppliers to move quickly to fully deploy the STIR/SHAKEN framework by the end of 2019.

(If you are not familiar with STIR/SHAKEN – take a listen to the tutorial found on YouTube here) Continue reading SIPNOC 2018 – The Robocall Summit

The Battle against Robocallers Gets Teeth – Round 4

By Alan Percy, Senior Director of Product Marketing, TelcoBridges

The battle to stop illegal robocalling is about to get teeth with introduction this week of the TRACED Act, introduced as a bill to the US Senate by Senators John Thune (R-S.D.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass) Continue reading The Battle against Robocallers Gets Teeth – Round 4

The State of Robocalling – a discussion with Eric Burger, FCC

by Harry Wakefield, Marketing Communications, TelcoBridges

TelcoBridges executives were in Chicago this week for the 2018 IIT RTC Conference and Expo. Our own Alan Percy sat down and recorded a podcast with FCC Chief Technology Officer Eric Burger, discussing one of our favourite subjects, robocalling fraud and actions the FCC is taking to protect consumers.


Listen at: https://youtu.be/nUTA2m1Chnk Continue reading The State of Robocalling – a discussion with Eric Burger, FCC

Battling Robocallers – Round 3

by Alan Percy, Senior Director of Product Marketing

This last month, a telemarketing firm hawking health insurance was fined $82 million for their role in 21 million illegal unsolicited robocalls.  Are the legal consequences enough to put an end to the nuisance calls?

As reported by the Washington Post, the Federal Communications Commission imposed an $82 million fine against a telemarketer who made more than 21 million unsolicited calls to consumers to try to sell health insurance and generate leads.

Despite this stiff penalty against one firm, the phones of Americans continue to ring with offers of bogus credit card protection offers, free vacations and fake IRS scams.

A root of the problem is the ease at which bulk phone calls can be made with spoofed caller-ID information, tricking unsuspecting victims to answer call they think are from friends or neighbors.  While there are legitimate reasons to substitute caller-ID information (Doctors office reminders, school notifications, etc) fraudulent abuse continues to be an industry-wide problem.

Meanwhile, progress is being made in the standards bodies with further refinement of the STIR/SHAKEN framework that will allow service providers to “certify” that the originating caller and communications service provider owns the rights to the calling number.

In August, the ATIS and SIP Forum announced the release of two key specifications needed to standardize the user experience and APIs needed for implementation of SHAKEN.  The first specification Technical Report on a Framework for Display of Verified Caller ID (ATIS-1000081) defines a standard user experience for calls from known callers, likely SPAM callers, suspect and potential fraudulent callers with color icons and information on screen-based devices.  The second specification Technical Report on SHAKEN API for a Centralized Signing and Signature Validation Server provides a proposed RESTful API for the implementation of the SHAKEN specification

This next couple weeks will see two industry speaking sessions addressing the issues, including:

Battling Robocallers – a Tutorial on STIR/SHAKEN presented by yours truly at Astricon in Orlando on Tuesday, October 9th at 10:00 AM

Comprehensive Approach to Illegal Robocalls presented by Eric Burger, CTO at the Federal Communications Commission at the Illinois Institute of Technology Real-Time Communications Conference on Tuesday October 16th at 9:00 AM

Later in December, the SIPNOC event has a dedicated Robocall Summit track specifically addressing the problem, including a number of industry thought leaders.

However, questions do remain on the timeframe and motivation of the service provider community as to when they plan to implement any or all of the recommendations, giving consumers a break from the fraudulent robocallers.