The Federal Communications Commission yesterday announced that two telecom companies have failed to fully implement the STIR/SHAKEN protocols and have been referred to the regulator’s enforcement unit for further investigation.
The providers — Bandwidth and Vonage — also lost any “leniency” that STIR/SHAKEN provided to networks that were attempting to comply with the protocols, according to the FCC.
“We will not turn a blind eye to providers that have not done enough to protect consumers from spoofed robocalls,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, in a statement. “The FCC is keeping close watch as phone companies implement STIR/SHAKEN – a critical tool to help robocall blocking and consumer information. We will hold companies accountable if they fail to meet their commitments to protect consumers from robocalls.”
STIR/SHAKEN went into effect last year, requiring carriers to deploy technology that was built to combat the illegal spoofing of phone numbers and provide comfort to consumers that the numbers they see on their Caller IDs are legitimate and actually come from the people who are calling them. STIR/SHAKEN is estimated to be saving consumers as much as $3 billion per year by no longer wasting time answering nuisance calls or illegal robocalls.
As of late October, Bandwidth was still using legacy equipment that supported a small amount of traffic that could not support STIR/SHAKEN, while Vonage was not verifying the Caller ID information for authenticated calls it receives. About 50% of inbound SIP calls are currently being validated by Vonage, according to the company. It said it is working with its partners to “expeditiously re-enable inbound processing” of STIR/SHAKEN information, but did not provide a more concrete timeline.
