Ajit Pai orders phone companies to adopt new anti-call technology in 2019

The Federal Communications Commission will consider a "regulatory intervention" if the major telephone companies do not adopt a new anti-call technology this year.

FCC President Ajit Pai has lobbied the telephone companies to implement the "SHAKEN" and "STIR" call blocking protocols, which ensure the authentication of calls. ;appellant. Most major suppliers have pledged to do so, but Pai issued a warning to latecomers yesterday.

"I applaud the companies that are committed to deploying the SHAKEN / STIR framework in 2019," said Pai in his statement yesterday. "This goal should be achievable for all major wireless service providers, interconnected VoIP operators and telephone operators – and I expect those who are lagging behind to do their best to catch up with them." it appears that the major operators are not meeting the deadline for doing so, and the FCC will need to consider regulatory intervention in the future. "

Pai did not specify the type of regulatory intervention that he would consider.

Together, SHAKEN and STIR prevent the impersonation of the caller. Carriers already offer call blocking services, but SHAKEN and STIR should make a big improvement.

"STIR and SHAKEN use digital certificates, based on common public key cryptography techniques, to ensure the security of the call number of a phone call," says telecom software provider TransNexus. "In simple terms, each phone service provider gets its digital certificate from a CA that trusts other service providers.Certificate technology allows the caller to verify that the number of the service provider. 39, appellant is correct and that it was not falsified. "

SHAKEN and STIR will work better if they are adopted by all major telephone operators.

In November, Pai criticized seven telephone operators who, he said, "do not seem to have concrete plans yet to put in place a robust call authentication framework." The carriers that caused the legion of Pai are CenturyLink, Charter, Frontier, Sprint, Telecom TDS, US Cellular and Vonage.

At the time, Pai praised seven other carriers that had already committed to implementing SHAKEN / STIR. These operators were AT & T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Comcast, Bandwidth.com, Cox and Google.

Pai sent letters to the 14 carriers asking them for more information about their projects. Yesterday, he published the answers of all.

In the letters, five of the seven carriers previously criticized by Pai have committed to adopt SHAKEN / STIR this year. The remaining companies were Sprint and TDS Telecom.

Sprint, the TDS plan is testing this year

Sprint's letter to Pai stated that she "plans to test the signing and verification of SHAKEN with major VoIP Peering partners in the second half of 2019 with the implementation of VoLTE. [Voice over LTE] on Sprint's network, "added Sprint, who" is planning laboratory and field integration tests in the second and third quarters of 2019. "But Sprint's letter did not say when the carrier would pbad tests to the provision of technology to all customers.

However, Sprint's letter was sent in November and the carrier now seems closer to a promising availability in 2019. Asked by Ars, Sprint said: "We are fully committed to deploying SHAKEN / STIR and plan to implement and test carrier interoperability this year. "Sprint has not answered us in the affirmative to the question of whether we are fully deploying SHAKEN / STIR this year.

TDS's letter said it's "committing[ted] to test a SHAKEN / STIR solution on our IP network in 2019. "But TDS has not committed to an implementation date." We hope and hope that these tests will allow us to determine the precise circumstances and timing in which SHAKEN / STIR can be implemented as a robust call authentication solution on our network, "the letter says.

When TDS contacted him today, TDS only stated that he "remained committed to the schedule and process outlined in his letter".

Other carriers previously criticized by Pai have offered more specific promises. CenturyLink, for example, stated that its goal was "an initial implementation starting as early as mid-2019" and that it "expects that[s] to be able to sign calls from the IP part of our telephone network by the end of 2019. "[s] start signing calls on our network in 2019, provided adequate third-party software solutions are available and scalable. "

Sprint and TDS cited obstacles to the adoption of SHAKEN / STIR. "Sprint is moving from the CDMA voice to VoLTE technology," Sprint told Pai in his letter. "SHAKEN / STIR is essentially a VoIP technology. There is no technical support for SHAKEN / STIR's CDMA voice application and the improvisation of a temporary solution would divert time and resources away from the transition to VoLTE, which would fully support SHAKEN / STIR. "

TDS stated that its network is "a hybrid system of IP and TDM solutions" and that SHAKEN and STIR can not be implemented on the old portion of TDM used primarily in rural areas. However, this does not explain why TDS does not commit to a 2019 deployment date on its IP network. Last month, T-Mobile announced that it has already deployed SHAKEN and STIR, although this system is initially only available on the Samsung Galaxy Note9.

Pai: no excuses

Pai was not convinced by the excuses of the carriers.

"While some carriers have committed to deploy these services in the coming months, others have covered themselves, citing concerns that other carriers seem to have already taken into account," announced yesterday. 39, announcement by the FCC. "President Pai believes that wireless service providers, interconnected VoIP service providers and telephone companies should make authentication of the applicant's identity (the SHAKEN / STIR framework) a priority and that he is convinced that the big operators can reach his goal of 2019. "

In addition, the FCC today proposed rules prohibiting the impersonation of the caller in text messages and international calls. The bans already applied to calls from the United States.

The FCC has also released today a report on illegal automated calls and the progress made to combat them.

Disclosure: The Advance / Newhouse partnership, which owns 13% of Charter, is part of Advance Publications. Advance Publications owns Condé Nast, who owns Ars Technica.