Congress has asked voice service providers to stop automated callers and install default call blocking. The FCC has the same mandate. To date, 12 voice service providers have endorsed a set of principles developed by the Attorneys General of 50 states and the District of Columbia, including free consumer call blocking, free implementation of STIR / SHAKEN on their networks and cooperation in investigations.

The agreement comes after AT & T and T-Mobile have deployed STIR / SHAKEN authentication between their networks to detect spoofed numbers. This reaffirms much of what the federal government has already asked the call providers.

AT & T, Sprint, T-Mobile, US Cellular, Verizon, Bandwidth Inc., CenturyLink, Charter, Comcast, Consolidated Communications, Frontier Communications and Windstream have agreed to:

  • offers free blocking and labeling of calls
  • implement STIR / SHAKEN authentication on all their networks
  • analyze high-volume traffic and monitor trends that may indicate an automatic call-back activity
  • investigate suspicious patterns or calls
  • confirm the identity of VoIP business customers – more conducive to automatic callback operations
  • Require subcontractors to cooperate with call tracing requests
  • cooperate with traceback investigations conducted by the State and the industry
  • communicate with the attorneys general of the states

Neither Congress nor the FCC required that call blocking be offered to customers free of charge. In reality, this agreement does not require much because it is not legally binding. However, given the public pressure on the issue and the actual costs incurred by service providers to deliver malicious traffic, you must expect some level of compliance with this paper trading.