WASHINGTON — Nov. 3, 2016 — ATIS solutions are central to completing the recommendations of the FCC’s Robocall Strike Force as it advances its mission to mitigate Caller ID spoofing and robocalling, as noted in the Strike Force’s recent report. The Robocall Strike Force is an industry initiative convened to accelerate development and adoption of technologies and solutions to block unwanted automated calls. As the experts responsible for many of the solutions defining the all-IP network, ATIS’ long-term work in this area is helping the industry forge a coordinated response to this challenge.
“The wide range of mitigation techniques ATIS has contributed and is currently developing are invaluable to the industry as it takes decisive and coordinated action to abate robocall proliferation,” said ATIS President and CEO Susan Miller. “Our efforts address the problem from all critical angles. They center around authenticating and verifying calling party information to provide a necessary foundation for a wide range of innovative and flexible call screening/blocking applications. In addition to helping consumers, this work is essential to maintaining consumer confidence in communications networks and services.”
As noted in the Robocall Strike Force report some of ATIS’ work initiatives will address:
Source authentication and caller ID. ATIS has accelerated its work on the standards to authenticate and verify caller identification for calls carried over an Internet Protocol (IP) network. The goal is to ensure robocall-blocking applications have access to accurate calling party information, and create higher end-user confidence in the identification of incoming calls for VoIP.
A certificate framework and governance model. ATIS is developing a framework under which cryptographic certificates would be issued to service providers, as well as an entire structure and ecosystem under which they will be managed. This work will protect the integrity of the calling party authentication service by ensuring that certificates are only provided to entities entitled to receive them.
Lab testing of new tools and solutions. ATIS is also working to validate key caller-ID elements to support deployment in service provider networks. This work will facilitate the testing of industry standards to assess their effectiveness for signing and verifying calling numbers.
In addition to these new initiatives, ATIS has fast-tracked several deliverables to support efforts to reduce unwanted robocalls. These include delivering best practices for robocalling mitigation, which are contained in the document Next Generation Network (NGN) Reference Document: Caller ID and Caller ID Spoofing; completing technical work on the specifications regarding secure caller ID; maintaining a list of telecom company contacts to speed the issuance of subpoena requests and simplify efforts to trace back to offending accounts; as well as completing selected solutions for Signaling System 7 (SS7) interworking with VoIP authentication.
ATIS looks forward to continuing its efforts to mitigate caller ID spoofing and robocalling—and to advancing the mission of the Robocall Strike Force.
