Today is a new day for companies making calls, including those in the accounts receivable management industry. Starting today, phone carriers are required to deploy the STIR/SHAKEN call authentication protocols that were built to combat the illegal spoofing of phone numbers and provide consumers with a level of comfort that the phone numbers they see on their caller IDs are actually the people who are calling them.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Sign up for a webinar on Wednesday, July 7 at 1pm ET to hear from Eric Troutman of Squire Patton Boggs and TCPAWorld.com and Rozanne Andersen of Ontario Systems as they talk about the deployment of STIR/SHAKEN and its impact on call blocking and call labeling. Click here to sign up. This webinar is being sponsored by TCN.
STIR/SHAKEN was originally supposed to be deployed by December 31, 2020, but carriers said they needed more time to update their systems to be able to install and perfect the technology. Smaller phone carriers will have until 2023 to comply with the STIR/SHAKEN framework.
The Federal Communications Commission has estimated that STIR/SHAKEN could save consumers as much as $3 billion a year by no longer wasting time answering nuisance calls or illegal robocalls. Carriers, meanwhile, have been quick to point out that STIR/SHAKEN does nothing to verify the content of a call, just the number the call is being made from.
June 30 is also the deadline for carriers to file certifications with the FCC detailing their efforts to “stem the origination of illegal robocalls on their networks.” Companies that do not deploy STIR/SHAKEN or submit their certifications are subject to enforcement action, the FCC noted.
AT&T, one of the country’s largest phone carriers, said it is currently blocking as many as 1 billion robocalls per month. Calls deemed likely to be fraudulent are automatically blocked while those suspected to be spam calls are labeled and connected so that users can make the decision whether to answer or not.
