Carrier Updates from Our Cloud Services Division

Due to the large number of companies that have been receiving robocalls and spam over the years, the FCC put a mandate in place that all carriers meet stir/shaken compliance.

What is Stir Shaken Compliance?

According to Google: STIR/SHAKEN is a series of protocols and a governance framework that ensure caller ID has not been spoofed, in order to reduce the number of illegal robocalls. STIR/SHAKEN works by authenticating and verifying encrypted information used to attest to the accuracy of caller ID information.

Carriers are required to have this compliance in place by 6/30/21.  What this compliance is doing is requiring each carrier to set up algorithms and share data with each other on caller id location.  If caller id is verified as not coming from the proper place, the carriers are blocking the numbers or reidentifying them as SPAM.   This is not going to solve the issue, but it is a good step.

Although this is an awesome way to help with robocalls, it is creating other problems. You are seeing those problems in the customers that are calling and telling us their numbers are showing as Spam risk etc.   This is because of those algorithms.

But Wait…. There’s More!

Some of the carriers have created a filter to ensure their customer’s numbers are not having the risk of coming up as Spam. This does require porting, and there is a small cost for each outbound call but it may be mitigated when their spending is reduced.  This product does protect the business number and the customers they call.  In the past, when someone was spoofing a number, the only thing that could be done is to change a number (not easy to do when you have a business).

In the future, the FCC plans on tracking each phone number by location and prosecute the spoofers.  Until then, businesses need a reliable option.  We can provide a solution from one of our partners that has their own fraud team that will track down the spoofer and stop it from occurring.  This isn’t to say the spoofer will not find another way to do it, but the team is behind you to get this issue resolved.  We are approaching the deadline for stir/shaken, and many carriers do not have it in place yet and they will most likely be extending the deadline.

If your company is out of contract and having this issue and not able to resolve it the old-fashioned way, this may be a good option to explore.  Unified can help.