Sprint yesterday that it has deployed STIR/SHAKEN protocols aimed at authenticating the caller on calls placed between the carrier and Comcast and T-Mobile.
Comcast has previously announced a similar arrangement with AT&T.
“This is a major milestone in the fight to help our customers protect themselves from unwanted robocalls that have become such a plague for the industry,” said Dr. John Saw, Sprint’s chief technology officer. “Our engineers have worked diligently with the teams at Comcast to bring this to fruition, and with work already underway with additional providers, we look forward to rolling out STIR/SHAKEN jointly across other networks as soon as possible.”
A few months ago, Ajit Pai, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, announced that his agency was working on a regulation to push carriers to deploy STIR/SHAKEN protocols on all calls placed on their networks. Carriers were supposed to have the technology in place by the end of 2019. The easy part for carriers is authenticating a calling party when dealing with calls where both the calling party and the called party are on the same network. The remaining work must be done on calls where the parties are not on the same network — such as someone with AT&T calling someone with T-Mobile.
By authenticating the originator of a phone call, the FCC is hoping that this will prevent scammers from spoofing phone numbers or from attempting to make illegal robocalls.
”While all carriers compete fiercely in the marketplace, we all agree that the industry-wide plague of robocalls and scammers must be tackled arm-in-arm with other carriers as we put the latest technology to work to help protect our customers,” said Sprint Chief Executive Michel Combes. “STIR/SHAKEN is one tool among many that Sprint is utilizing in a multi-year anti-robocalling development program to improve our customers’ experience.”
