WASHINGTON — April 28, 2017 — The significant efforts underway by the telecom industry to address the challenges associated with unwanted robocalls that bombard U.S. consumers each year are highlighted in the April 28 Robocall Strike Force Report. ATIS applauds the efforts of the industry, including many ATIS members, to develop solutions to mitigate this serious problem.
Consumers lose millions of dollars every year to caller fraud, making this the FCC’s biggest source of consumer complaint. An industry-led group, the FCC Robocall Strike Force formed in August 2016 to address the problem and to develop comprehensive ways to detect and filter unwanted robocalls. The Industry Robocall Strike Force Report is a comprehensive overview of the work taking place toward this goal.
“ATIS has been central to industry efforts to deploy anti-robocall solutions, protect consumers and maintain trust in our telecommunications systems,” said ATIS President and CEO Susan Miller. “Our work is a careful balancing of the need for quick action with the need for effective mitigation approaches. Our industry-driven efforts provide a solid foundation for the future of call-blocking applications.”
One of ATIS’ major contributions is the development of SHAKEN (Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs) specification. SHAKEN, which was developed by the ATIS-SIP Forum Joint NNI Task Force, defines a signature to verify a calling number and specifies how it will be transported in SIP “on the wire.” Working together with the IETF’s STIR (Secure Telephony Identity Revisited) standard, STIR/SHAKEN offers, for the first time in the network, a practical mechanism to provide verified information about the calling party as well as the call’s origin. This helps providers identify spoofed calls so that they can alert customers. This specification not only provides a mechanism to mitigate the problem but also assists law enforcement in finding the unwanted calls’ source.
The development of SHAKEN is only one component of ATIS’ multi-pronged approach to robocall mitigation. In addition to the development of the underlying technical framework, ATIS is also advancing the governance model associated with the implementation of this framework by the industry and providing the ATIS Robocalling Testbed, which allows carries to test SHAKEN by generating end-to-end calls that include all network functions.
If your company is interested in being part of ATIS’ work to mitigate robocalling, contact ATIS Senior Technology Consultant, Jim McEachern.
