Jul 16, 2021
The New Anti-Robocall Technology is Coming Online
I know everybody I talk to hates these robo calls. They're happening all of the time. What are we doing about it? The FCC has made some changes and they just went into place. So we're going to talk about STIR/SHAKEN, right?
Of course the government has to come up with some really cute acronyms and that's what's turned, shaken are, but here is what's happened. We have the ability to over TCPI P send phone calls. In fact, in my phone, I have a phone that's hooked up to T-Mobile and it is using wifi.
[00:00:38] So when I'm making a phone call, it is going over my wifi in the office or at my house or wherever. It doesn't even use the regular salad or network, unless it has to why? Because it's all TCP IP. And then on top of it, sometimes with LTE and now always with five G you are using TCP IP. So your voice is converted into a digital signal.
[00:01:10] Right there on your phone. And it is handled as data, just like pretty much any other data would be handled. Now our cell phones, of course, for a long time have been digital and have been in coding it, but they have not been using it as regular TCPI peop. So what the federal communications realized is since most of the tracks.
[00:01:35] That we have on our phone networks nowadays is actually internet traffic. It's TCP IP. Why don't we add a little bit to the protocol? And they came up with this whole new way of being able to track the originator of a phone call right now, if you have a landline, this is not going to benefit you at all.
[00:02:02] And we're going to talk about the different carriers here, but they don't have to comply these landline operators for another couple of years. Although the FCC right now is circulating a petition and is trying to make it so they have to comply. More quickly, but the nation's largest phone companies have met this deadline that was set by the FCC to put this new anti robocall technology in place.
[00:02:31] But I want to warn you guys that does not mean that it is going to stop all of these robo calls anytime. Soon where it's not going to stop, but you might have noticed that at the end of June, there was a noticeable cutback in some of these robocalls. Now these are the scammers that are calling us and are pretending that they are a local phone number, right?
[00:02:59] Their biggest trick is, yeah, I've got the same area code and first three digits, I'll call it a prefix as you do. So you should answer that phone. They announced at the FCC last Wednesday that quote, the largest voice service providers are now using stir shaken caller ID authentication standards in their internet protocol networks in accordance with the June 30th deadline set by the FCC.
[00:03:26] This widespread implementation helps protect consumers against malicious. Spoofed robo calls and helps law enforcement track the bad. So it, I think is a very good idea. It's a step in the right direction. It is going to help a whole lot at T and T Verizon T-Mobile and us cellular have all put these in place.
[00:03:54] In March, the FCC denied petitions for deadline extension from Verizon and us cellular are saying that they didn't meet the high standard of undue hardship. I think that makes sense. You've got to force these guys. Sometimes Verizon was saying that they had a small area of their fiber based home phone network that would not be able to meet it.
[00:04:17] So again, it's landline. Versus the home phone that work, many of us have it. Comcast provides it as well, but basically if it's it IP based, they didn't have any sort of exceptions. So Verizon is now exchanging the stir shaken enabled phone calls with wireless carer carriers. It represents about 80% of the U S wireless industry.
[00:04:45] Verizon said this week, so 80%. Yeah, you should have seen a bit of a drop more than 135 million calls a day are currently being exchanged between Verizon and the other carriers with the number of calls that are being exchanged using this tracking technology grow. It's also been deployed on IP enabled wire line phone networks operated by Comcast charter at and T Verizon and many others.
[00:05:17] So we're pretty happy about this. We'll see what ends up happening in general, but some care companies that carry a lot of robo calls are not yet required to follow the stir shaken technology and the rules around. Because there's an exemption for carriers with a hundred thousand or fewer customers. So that's going to be a bit of a problem, but think about how you have to roll out technology.
[00:05:46] Rolling it out via these big carriers and doing that first is seeing where the holes are in the technology. What's not working properly. That's the way to handle it. And then by having the big carriers do it, they're going to bear the brunt of the expense. Because always right. Those big screen TVs used to be five to 10,000.
[00:06:12] I remember $15,000. That's a very big deal. And then it goes down and down. Now you can buy them at Walmart for 300 bucks. So having the big guys do at first makes a lot of sense. It's going to prove the technology, improve the technology, drive the costs down, and then you can bet that these smaller carriers are also going to be required to do this fairly soon.
[00:06:38] So the way the protocols are working is they are using tokens and to verify. The accuracy of the caller ID. So they're using public key cryptology. For those of you who know what that is using digital certificate, getting major us companies to adopt. It really was very big milestone. I'm very glad they finally did it by the way.
[00:07:01] Stir, shaken. Ordered by Congress and FCC chairman as PI. You remember him? He did a lot of great things to help out communications, but he was only having voluntary compliance. And so it didn't lead to like widespread adoption. So this law really forced them into it. And they're now. So we'll see what happens.
[00:07:28] Small carriers are exempt for now. Landlines. Aren't doing it. There's a lot of the TDM based stuff out there, but it's going to happen. There's also a gap in, at and T network right now. So we'll see. What ends up happening? Hey, I want to encourage you guys. If you have not already to sign up for my newsletter, I don't spam you, right?
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